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EDITED  BY  JOHN  MORLEY 


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THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY 


2)e  (Stuince^ 


by 


DAVID    MASSON,   LL.D.,   Litt.D. 

AUTHOR  OF 
"LIFE  OF  JOHN  MILTON"  "BRITISH  NOVELISTS"  ETC. 


Bnalisb  Obcn  ot  Xetters 

EDITED  BY 

JOHN   MORLEY 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW     YORK     AND     LONDON 
1902 


a^^(= 


PKEFATORY  NOTE. 

For  matters  of  fact  in  the  following  pages  the  chief  an- 
thorities  are  the  collective  edition  of  De  Quincey's  works, 
in  sixteen  volumes,  published  by  Messrs.  A.  &  C.  Black, 
of  Edinburgh,  and  the  Life  of  De  Quincey,  in  two  vol- 
umes, by  Mr.  H.  A.  Page  (London,  John  Hogg  &  Co., 
1877).  This  last,  the  only  extensive  and  complete  Life 
of  De  Quincey  in  the  language,  contains  a  large  quantity 
of  biographical  information  supplied  to  Mr.  Page  by  the 
family  of  De  Quincey,  and  by  friends  and  correspondents 
of  his,  much  of  it  in  the  form  of  interesting  letters  and 
papers  never  before  made  public.  Such  information  had 
long  been  desired  in  vain ;  and  till  the  appearance  of  Mr. 
Page's  work  little  more  was  known  about  De  Quincey's 
life  than  had  been  revealed  by  himself  in  the  autobio- 
graphical portions  of  his  writings.  While,  however,  Mr. 
Page's  work  and  those  autobiographical  writings  of  De 
Quincey  have  been  the  main  authorities  for  facts  and 
dates,  there  have  been  miscellaneous  gleanings  from  other 
quarters.  The  chronological  list  of  De  Quincey's  maga- 
zine writings  drawn  up  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Bohn,  and  inserted 
in  the  article  "  Quincey,  De,"  in  his  edition  of  Lowndes's 
Bibliographer's  Manual,  has  been  of  much  use ;  and  among 
smaller  memoirs  consulted  I  may  mention  the  article  on 
De  Quincey  in  the  current  edition  of  the  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  written  by  Mr.  J.  R.  Findlay,  one  of  the  most 
intimate  friends  of  De  Quincey  in  his  last  years.     At  va- 


Tl  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

rious  points  a  little  independent  research  has  been  found 
necessary,  chiefly  in  the  form  of  an  inspection  of  the  old 
volumes  of  the  magazines  and  other  periodicals  in  which 
De  Quincey's  papers  originally  appeared.  For  the  rest,  I 
have  some  advantage  in  having  myself  met  and  conversed 
with  De  Quincey,  so  as  to  retain  a  perfect  recollection  of 
his  appearance,  voice,  and  manner,  and  in  being  familiar 
with  the  scenes  amid  which  he  spent  the  last  nine-and- 
twenty  years  of  his  life. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAOB 
PaRKNTAGB,  IinPANCT,  AND  CHILDHOOD 1 


CHAPTER  II. 

BOTHOOD  AND  CHANGES  OF  SCHOOL,  WITH  A  ToUR  IN  IRELAND       .      16 

CHAPTER  in. 
Vagrancy  in  North  Wales  and  in  London 28 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Mainly  at  Oxford,  with  Visits  to  London  and  the  Lakes     .    85 

CHAPTER  V. 
Bachelor  Life  at  the  Lakes 45 

CHAPTER  VL 

Married  Life  at  the  Lakes. — Prostration  under  Opium. — 
Protincial  Editorship 59 

CHAPTER  Vn. 

Partly  in  London,  Partly  at  the  Lakes,  Partly  in  Edinburgh. 
— The  "Confessions"  and  other  Articles  in  the  "Lon- 
don Magazine,"  and  First  Articles  in  "  Blackwood  "      .    YO 


Tia  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  Vra. 

—  Further  Contr 
WOOD  "  AMD  Articles  in  "  Tait's  Magazine  " 86 


PASS 

Wholly  in  Edinburgh.  —  Further  Contributions  to  "Black- 


CHAPTER  IX. 

Lasswade  and  Eoinbitrgh,  with  Visits   to  Glasgow:   More 
Contributions  to  "  Blackwood  "  and  "  Tait  "     ....    96 


CHAPTER  X. 

Lasswade,  and  No.  42  Lothian  Street,  Edinburgh. — The  Col- 
lected Works. — Last  Days  of  De  Quincey 112 


CHAPTER  XI. 

Dk  Quincet's  Writinos  :  General  Characteristics    .  .  .  .135 

CHAPTER  Xn. 

De  Quincey's  Writings  :  Classitication  and  Review  .  .  .169 

L  Descriptive,  Biographical,  and  Historical  .  .  .  .160 

n.  Speculative,  Didactic,  and  Critical 170 

ILL  Iuaqinativs  Writings  and  Prose  Poetry     .  .  .  .183 


DE    QUINCEY. 

CHAPTER  I. 

FARBNTAOK,  IKFANCY,  AND    CHILDHOOD. 
[1786-1796.] 

De  Quincby  took  some  pains  to  explain  that  Ws  family 
was  not,  as  the  form  of  the  name  might  suggest,  a  recent 
French  importation  into  England,  but  had  come  in  with 
the  Conquest.  Genealogists,  indeed,  find  that  the  first  of 
the  English  De  Quinceys  was  a  certain  companion  of  the 
Conqueror,  named  Richard,  probably  of  Norwegian  de- 
scent, though  hailing  more  immediately  from  the  village 
or  district  of  Quince,  in  French  Normandy.  His  descend- 
ants became  great  personages  in  England,  reaching  their 
highest  in  one  or  two  De  Quinceys  who  were  Earls  of 
Winchester  in  the  thirteenth  century.  De  Quincey,  while 
dwelling  with  fondness  on  these  associations  with  his  name, 
admits  that  the  Earls  of  Winchester,  and  their  shadowy. 
Crusading  retinue,  "suddenly  came  to  grief;"  and  that 
most  of  the  English  De  Quinceys,  for  many  generations 
before  his  own  time,  had  been  very  insignificant  and  ob- 
scure persons.  With  other  English  families  of  like  origin, 
they  had  dropped  the  aristocratic  prefix  De;  in  addition  to 
which  they  had  consented,  in  the  easy  old  days  of  option- 
al spelling,  to  be  Quincys,  or  Quincies,  or  Quinceys,  just  as 
it  might  please  their  neighbours. 
1* 


8  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

It  seems  to  have  been  De  Quincey  himself — though  he 
does  not  mention  the  matter — who  resuscitated  the  prefix 
De  (which  he  always  wrote,  however,  with  the  small  c?,  and 
not  with  the  capital)  in  his  particular  branch  of  the  fami- 
ly. His  father,  at  all  events,  called  himself  Thomas  Quin- 
cey. This  father  of  De  Quincey  must  have  been  a  rather 
interesting  man.  He  is  described  by  his  son  as  having 
been  "  literary  to  the  extent  of  having  written  a  book ;" 
which  book  has  been  identified  by  very  recent  research 
with  an  anonymous  octavo  volume  or  pamphlet  published 
in  London  in  1775,  and  entitled  A  Short  Tour  in  the  Mid- 
land Counties  of  England,  performed  in  the  Sujnmer  of 
1772:  together  with  an  Account  of  a  Similar  Excursion 
undertaken  September,  1774.  The  greater  part  of  the  con- 
tents of  the  volume  had  previously  appeared  in  five  success- 
ive instalments  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  May,  June, 
July,  August,  and  September,  1774,  under  the  title  "A 
Tour  in  the  Midland  Counties  of  England,  performed  in 

the  Summer  of  1772.     (By  T Q .)"     And  the 

separate  publication,  as  a  preface  explains,  was  occasioned 
partly  by  the  author's  resentment  of  the  liberties  that  had 
been  taken  with  the  original  text  by  the  editor  of  the 
magazine,  and  partly  by  a  desire  to  improve  the  piece  into 
"  a  less  soporific  potion  for  the  mental  taste  of  his  friends." 
Though  in  the  form  of  brief  business-like  notes,  the  per- 
formance is  altogether  very  creditable.  The  jottings  give 
the  author's  observations  of  the  state  of  farming,  draining, 
manufactures,  mining  industry,  &c.,  in  the  district  trav- 
ersed, with  hints  of  decided  opinions  of  his  own  on  sev- 
eral vexed  economic  questions.  There  is  an  eye  also  for 
the  picturesque  in  scenery,  and  for  architectural  beauties 
or  defects  in  towns,  churches,  and  country-seats ;  and  the 
style  is  that  of  a  well-educated  man,  accustomed  to  write 


1.]  PARENTAGE,  INFANCY,  AND  CHILDHOOD.  8 

English.  Once  or  twice  the  language  rises  towards  the 
poetic,  and  once  there  is  an  admiring  quotation  from  Beat- 
tie's  Minstrel,  the  first  part  of  which  had  recently  appear- 
ed. At  the  time  of  this  first  and  only  literary  venture  of 
De  Quincey's  father  he  cannot  have  been  more  than  three- 
and-twenty  years  of  age ;  and  one  infers,  from  the  matter 
of  the  performance,  that  he  was  then  residing  in  London, 
in  some  commercial  occupation  which  took  him  occasion- 
ally on  a  circuit  northwards.  There  is  a  suggestion  of  pre- 
vious acquaintance  with  Lincolnshire,  and  of  some  special 
connexion  with  that  county.  There  would  be  little  diflS- 
culty,  we  suppose,  in  investigating  these  antecedents  of  the 
interesting  T.  Q.  of  1774;  meanwhile,  what  concerns  us 
here  is,  that  within  about  five  years  from  that  date  he  is 
found  settled  in  Manchester  as  a  rising  merchant,  with  his 
town-house  or  place  of  business  in  Fountain  Street,  and 
with  extensive  transactions  and  correspondence — especial- 
ly with  Portugal,  America,  and  the  West  Indies.  He  had 
then  married  a  Miss  Penson,  a  lady  of  very  good  family 
connexions,  two  brothers  of  whom,  younger  than  herself, 
went  out  soon  aftei-wards  to  Bengal  as  officers  in  the  ser- 
vice of  the  East  India  Company.  Of  this  marriage  there 
were  bom,  between  1779  and  1792,  eight  children  in  all, 
four  of  them  sons  and  four  daughters.  Our  De  Quincey — 
the  fifth  child  and  the  second  son — was  born  on  the  1 5th 
of  August,  1785,  when  his  father  was  about  thirty-three 
years  of  age,  and  his  mother  about  three  years  younger. 

The  memoirs  of  De  Quincey  have  been  wonderfully 
unanimous  in  the  statement  that  he  was  born  at  a  country- 
house  of  his  father's,  called  Greenhay,  in  what  was  then 
a  perfectly  rustic  neighbourhood,  about  a  mile  out  of  Man- 
chester. The  statement  is  a  blunder.  De  Quincey  him- 
self distinctly  informs  us  that  he  was  bom  in  Manchester, 


4  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

though  he  passed  the  whole  of  his  childhood,  after  the 
first  few  weeks  of  his  existence,  in  a  rural  seclusion  near 
the  town.  He  informs  us  further  that  this  suburban  se- 
clusion, the  habitual  abode  of  the  family  after  his  birth, 
as  distinct  from  the  town-house  or  place  of  business  which 
his  father  continued  to  keep  up  in  Fountain  Street,  was 
first  in  **  a  pretty  rustic  dwelling "  called  The  Farm,  and 
not  till  about  1791  or  1792  in  the  larger  country-house  of 
Greenhay,  which  his  father  had  then  just  built  and  equip- 
ped at  an  expense  of  about  6000Z.  The  name  Oreenhayy 
he  adds,  was  then  an  invention  of  his  mother's,  partly  in 
recognition  of  the  vicinity  of  a  hamlet  called  Greenhill, 
and  partly  to  signify,  by  revival  of  the  old  English  word 
hay,  meaning  hedge  or  hedge -row  (same  as  the  French 
haie),  that  the  domicile  was  characteristically  a  country 
mansion,  with  lawns  and  gardens,  sequestered  within  gates 
and  a  verdant  ring-fence.  The  priority  of  "The  Farm" 
to  **  Greenhay  "  is  indubitable. 

In  the  life  of  De  Quincey  even  such  a  trifle  is  worth 
noting.  In  no  autobiography  do  the  recollections  of  mere 
infancy  and  childhood  occupy  so  much  space,  or  count  for 
so  much,  as  in  his.  Accordingly,  while  the  general  impres- 
sion he  conveys  of  himself  from  his  second  or  third  year 
onwards  is  that  of  a  very  diminutive,  shy,  sensitive,  and 
dreamy  child,  moving  about,  when  out-of-doors,  always 
on  green  turf  or  in  garden-walks,  and  within-doors  always 
among  young  brothers  and  sisters,  in  a  house  of  wealthy 
and  even  luxurious  elegance,  the  actual  incidents  of  his 
infancy  and  childhood,  which  he  has  embalmed  for  us  so 
carefully  in  such  marvellous  prose,  have  to  be  distributed 
between  the  two  habitations  above  named,  once  visible  on 
the  rustic  margin  of  Manchester,  but  now  engulfed  in  its 
brick  and  uproar.     It  was  at  "The  Farm"  that  he  had 


t]  PARENTAGE,  INFANCY,  AND  CHILDHOOD.  6 

the  "remarkable  dream  of  terrific  grandeur  about  a  fa* 
vourite  nurse,"  which  proved  to  him  afterwards  that  his 
dreaming  tendencies  had  been  constitutional ;  it  was  here 
that  the  first  sense  of  pathos  had  come  over  him,  in  watch- 
ing, very  early  in  spring,  the  appearance  of  some  crocuses ; 
and  it  was  here  that  he  had  his  first  experiences  of  death 
in  a  household.  Of  his  three  sisters  older  than  himself, 
Jane,  the  second  in  age,  died  before  he  was  two  years  old ; 
and  he  could  remember  the  whisper  that  ran  through  the 
house,  muffled  so  as  not  to  reach  his  mother,  of  some  harsh 
treatment  of  the  dying  sufferer  by  one  of  the  female  ser- 
vants. Then,  four  years  later,  came  the  death  of  the  eld- 
est sister,  Elizabeth,  the  gentlest  and  best  beloved,  his  in- 
structress and  constant  companion,  whose  image,  and  the 
signs  of  whose  noble  intellectual  promise  in  her  face  and 
forehead,  though  she  had  not  attained  her  tenth  year,  were 
to  dwell  with  him,  like  a  visionary  guardianship  from  the 
spiritual  world,  through  aJl  the  future  years  of  his  own 
life.  Who  can  forget  the  pages  in  which  he  tells  of  the 
trance  of  reverie  and  delirium  which  fell  upon  him  that 
bright  midsummer  day,  when  he  had  stolen  alone  into  the 
chamber  where  the  little  corpse  lay,  and,  in  the  flood  of 
sunshine  that  streamed  into  the  chamber  from  the  cloud- 
less sky  without,  there  seemed  suddenly  to  moan  forth  a 
solemn  wind,  "  a  wind  that  might  have  swept  the  fields  of 
mortality  for  a  thousand  centuries,"  rising  and  swelling 
till  the  eye  partook  of  the  magic  of  the  ear,  and  the  bil- 
lows of  unearthly  music  seemed  to  tend  to  a  shaft  that 
ran  upwards  in  quest  of  the  throne  of  God?  All  these 
incidents,  in  their  literal  original,  or  in  the  transfiguration 
given  to  them  by  poetic  memory,  have  to  be  referred  to 
the  period  when  "  Greenhay  "  was  yet  to  come ;  and  when 
we  do  enter  that  house,  in  the  year  1792,  it  is  with  the 


«  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

knowledge  of  a  new  fact  in  the  family  history.  De  Quin- 
cey,  then  in  his  seventh  year,  had  seen,  he  tells  us,  so  little 
of  his  father  that,  if  the  two  had  met  anywhere  by  chance, 
they  would  not  have  known  each  other.  The  merchant, 
though  in  the  prime  of  his  manhood,  had  long  been  the 
prey  of  a  pulmonary  consumption ;  and  for  several  years 
he  had  been  in  the  habit,  for  the  benefit  of  his  health,  while 
attending  to  his  foreign  and  colonial  business  transactions, 
of  residing  as  much  as  possible  in  Lisbon  or  Madeira,  or 
in  some  of  the  West  India  Islands,  with  but  occasional 
visits  to  England.  But,  one  day,  when  the  house  of  Green- 
hay  was  still  somewhat  of  a  novelty,  and  the  mother  had 
gone  to  meet  her  invalid  husband  at  the  port  where  he 
was  expected,  it  was  known  to  the  children  that  their  fa- 
ther was  coming  home.  He  was  coming  home,  in  fact, 
to  die.  For  hours,  in  the  summer  evening,  the  children 
and  servants  had  been  on  the  lawn  before  the  house,  listen- 
ing for  the  sound  of  wheels  in  the  winding  lane  that  led 
from  the  main  road ;  and  it  was  not  till  near  midnight  that 
the  horses'  heads  emerged  from  the  gloom,  the  carriage 
then  approaching  the  house  at  a  hearse-like  pace,  and  the 
white  pillows  on  which  the  invalid  was  propped  catching 
the  eye  of  the  child  and  striking  his  imagination  with  a 
ghastly  effect.  For  several  weeks  the  invalid  languished 
on  a  sofa,  his  quietest  and  most  dreamy  child  admitted  to 
him  in  his  waking  hours  more  than  the  rest,  and  standing 
beside  him  with  the  rest  when  he  died. 

By  the  father's  death  the  family,  consisting  of  the 
mother  and  six  children,  the  last  posthumously  born,  was 
left  poorer  than  it  had  been,  but  still  in  clear  possession 
of  1600/.  a  year.  The  allowance  for  each  of  the  four  sons 
was  to  be  150/.  a  year,  and  that  for  each  of  the  two  sur- 
viving daughters   100/.  a  year,  while  the  rest  seems  to 


I.]  PARENTAGE,  INFANCy,  AND  CHILDHOOD.  7 

have  been  left  at  the  disposal  of  the  mother.  In  the 
guardianship  of  the  children  till  they  came  of  age  there 
were  associated  with  the  mother  four  selected  friends  of 
the  father,  living  in  or  near  Manchester;  but  the  real 
management  for  the  time  was  with  the  mother.  De 
Quincey's  mentions  of  his  mother  are  uniformly  respectful 
and  reverent,  with  just  a  shade  of  critical  remark  on  that 
side  of  her  character  which  ruled  her  relations  to  him- 
self. Of  stately  social  ways  and  refined  tastes,  and  of 
even  rare  natural  endowments,  she  was,  De  Quincey  says, 
though  in  no  sense  professedly  a  literary  woman,  yet 
emphatically  "an  intellectual  woman,"  whose  letters 
among  her  friends,  if  they  could  have  been  collected  and 
published,  would  have  been  found  hardly  inferior,  for  the 
racy  grace  of  their  idiomatic  English,  to  those  of  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu.  But  there  was,  he  hints,  a 
touch  too  much  of  Roman  firmness  or  hardness  in  her, 
which,  especially  after  her  friendship  with  Hannah  More 
and  other  notables  of  the  Clapham  Evangelical  Sect  had 
confirmed  her  in  their  rigid  views  of  religion,  disqualified 
her  for  the  peculiarly  sympathetic  treatment  required  by 
at  least  one  of  her  sons.  The  present  writer  knew  a 
venerable  lady  who,  in  her  youth,  had  seen  much  of  De 
Quincey's  mother;  and  her  account  tallied  closely  with 
De  Quincey's  own.  Indeed,  this  venerable  lady,  being 
herself  a  strict  religionist  of  the  antique  evangelical  type, 
retained  to  the  last  an  opinion  of  De  Quincey  which  she 
had  probably  caught  from  colloquies  with  his  mother  con- 
cerning him  in  his  most  dubious  days.  A  stately  woman, 
every  inch  a  lady,  moving  in  the  best  county  circles,  and 
■with  her  feet  on  the  Rock  of  Ages — such  was,  and  always 
had  been,  De  Quincey's  mother.  As  for  the  son,  celebrity 
or  no  celebrity,  what  was  he  but  a  waif? 


8  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

For  four  years  after  the  death  of  De  Quincey's  father, 
or  from  1792  to  1796,  the  widow  continued  to  live  at 
Greenhay,  with  her  orphan  children  about  her,  doing  her 
best  for  their  education.  We  hardly  know  when  De 
Quincey  began  to  read  and  write ;  but,  from  all  he  tells 
us  of  the  years  of  his  life  that  have  now  been  sketched, 
one  infers  that,  with  perhaps  too  little  music  or  other 
kindred  recreation  in  the  house,  reading  had  been  abso- 
lutely unrestricted  for  him  and  his  sisters,  and  that  he 
had  been  always  with  one  of  them  when  he  could,  or  in  a 
quiet  comer  by  himself,  conning  some  delicious  piece  of 
juvenile  verse  or  prose.  Dr.  Johnson  and  Cowper  were 
then  the  English  authors  of  greatest  recent  repute;  but, 
in  addition  to  the  Bible,  it  is  of  Mrs.  Barbauld's  books 
and  the  Arabian  Nights  that  we  hear  as  first  fascinating 
the  De  Quincey  children  and  moving  them  to  questions. 
In  one  very  suggestive  chapter,  treating  of  the  power  of 
individual  passages  in  books  to  find  out  the  minds  fitted 
for  their  reception,  De  Quincey  cites  as  an  instance  in  his 
own  case  the  effect  upon  him,  in  his  childhood,  of  the 
opening  passage  in  the  story  of  Aladdin.  That  there 
should  be  a  magician  dwelling  in  the  depths  of  Africa, 
and  aware  of  an  enchanted  lamp,  imprisoned  somewhere 
in  a  subterranean  chamber,  which  could  be  found  out  only 
by  the  child  predestined  for  the  adventure,  and  that  this 
magician,  by  putting  his  ear  to  the  ground  and  listening 
to  the  sounds  of  the  footsteps  of  all  the  human  beings 
living  on  the  globe,  should  know  for  certain  that  the 
predestined  finder  of  the  lamp  was  a  little  boy  then 
running  about,  thousands  of  miles  off,  in  the  streets  of 
Bagdad,  was  a  revelation  of  the  universal  connexions  of 
things  which  gave  rise  to  no  end  of  pondering.  This 
from  the  Arabian  Nights,  and  an  anecdote  of  noble  re- 


I.]  PAEENTAGE,  INFANCY,  AND  CHILDHOOD.  9 

venge  picked  out  of  an  historical  miscellany,  were,  we  are 
given  to  understand,  the  passages  of  literature  that  had 
fastened  most  strongly  on  the  little  De  Quincey  at  the 
time  when  his  sister  Elizabeth  was  still  alive  to  share  his 
enthusiasms.  At  the  date  at  which  we  have  now  arrived, 
however,  there  was  a  change  of  circumstances.  The  boy 
had  come  to  an  age  when  home-teaching  and  miscellaneous 
voluntary  reading  were  to  be  supplemented  by  something 
more  regular,  in  the  shape  of  daily  lessons  under  a  tutor 
conveniently  near.  The  tutor  chosen  was  the  Rev.  S.  H., 
one  of  the  guardians  of  the  children  by  their  father's  will, 
and  then  curate  of  a  church  in  the  part  of  Manchester 
called  Salford.  To  the  house  of  this  Mr.  S.  H.,  about 
two  miles  from  Greenhay,  the  little  fellow  was  to  trudge 
daily  for  his  lessons  in  the  morning,  returning  in  the  after- 
noon. This  would  not  have  mattered  much  if  he  had  re- 
mained still  the  eldest  boy  in  the  Greenhay  household. 
But,  since  the  father's  death,  there  had  come  to  live  at 
Greenhay,  and  to  partake  in  the  lessons  of  Mr.  S.  H.  at 
Salford,  Master  William  De  Quincey  himself,  the  very 
top  of  the  family,  full  twelve  years  of  age,  or  about  five 
years  older  than  Thomas.  Hitherto  Thomas  had  known 
little  or  nothing  of  this  senior  brother  of  his,  who  had 
been  for  some  time  with  his  father  in  Lisbon,  and  then, 
proving  unmanageable,  had  been  sent  to  the  Grammar 
School  of  Louth,  in  Lincolnshire.  But  now  he  was  to 
know  enough.  Never  was  such  a  boy  as  this  William 
De  Quincey — such  a  boisterous,  frank,  pugilistic,  clever, 
inventive,  not  unlikable,  but  wholly  unendurable,  son  of 
eternal  racket.  "His  genius  for  mischief  amounted  to 
inspiration,"  reports  his  principal  victim.  For  no  sooner 
had  he  arrived  than  he  had  taken  possession  of  the  house 

and  all  in  it  like  a  whirlwind,  and  poor  little  Thomas,  as 
B 


10  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

the  next  living  thing  under  him,  had  been  collared  by  him 
at  once  for  his  fag  and  spaniel. 

It  is  not  for  nothing  that  De  Quincey  heads  the  long 
chapter  of  more  than  eighty  pages  in  which  he  treats  of 
the  time  of  his  subjection  to  the  despotism  of  his  stormy 
elder  brother  with  the  words  Introduction  to  the  World  of 
Strife.  Digressive  as  that  chapter  is,  one  receives  from  it 
a  unity  of  general  impression  corresponding  to  the  title. 
One  can  see  that,  during  the  three  years  and  a  half  of 
which  so  much  fun  is  made  in  the  retrospect,  the  nervous 
little  creature  who  had  been  linked  to  such  a  steam-engine 
of  a  brother  was  in  the  main  very  miserable.  It  was  not 
merely  that  his  brother  had  picked  a  quarrel  with  the  boys 
of  a  cotton-factory  on  the  skirts  of  Manchester,  just  at  the 
point  where  the  road  from  Greenhay  entered  the  town  by 
a  particular  bridge,  and  that  once  or  twice  every  day,  as 
they  went  and  came  between  Greenhay  and  their  tutor's 
house  in  Salford,  there  had  to  be  a  battle  at  this  spot 
between  them  and  some  of  the  factory  boys,  every  recur- 
rence of  which  threw  the  little  creature  into  new  terror. 
It  was  that  his  very  thoughts  and  imaginations  were  no 
longer  his  own,  but  were  dictated  to  him  and  shaped  for 
him  by  the  energies  of  his  companion.  The  war  with  the 
factory  boys  itself,  for  example,  became  a  double  torment 
by  being  idealized  by  his  brother  into  a  great  enterprise 
in  which  he  was  commander-in-chief,  with  absolute  powers, 
while  Thomas  was  the  responsible  second.  For  his  con- 
duct in  the  campaign  from  day  to  day  in  this  character 
of  responsible  second  was  not  only  incessantly  discussed 
by  the  commander-in-chief  in  their  colloquies  along  the 
road,  but  was  the  subject  of  merciless  comment  in  bulle- 
tins and  gazettes  published  by  the  commander-in-chief  for 
the  benefit  of  Mrs.  Evans,  the  house-keeper  at  Greenhay, 


I.]  PARENTAGE,  INFANCY,  AND  CHILDHOOD.  11 

and  the  rest  of  the  world  there.  Now  he  was  promoted 
to  be  major-general,  as  having  done  pretty  well ;  now  he 
was  under  arrest  for  cowardice  and  was  to  bo  drummed 
out  of  the  army ;  again,  restored  to  his  rank  by  the  inter- 
cession of  a  distinguished  lady  (Mrs.  Evans),  he  received 
also  the  Order  of  the  Bath ;  and  once  he  was  in  danger 
of  being  hanged  for  treacherous  correspondence  with  the 
enemy.  Nor  was  this  all.  Besides  being  commander-in- 
chief  in  the  war  with  the  factory  boys,  his  brother  was 
king  of  an  imaginary  kingdom  called  Tigrosylvania ;  and 
poor  De  Quincey,  to  accommodate  him  in  his  Napoleonic 
propensities  to  invasion,  was  obliged  to  be  king  of  another 
imaginary  kingdom  called  Gombroon.  Then  not  only 
was  Gombroon  liable  to  invasion  by  the  Tigrosylvanians, 
but  the  wretched  government  of  Gombroon  and  the  low 
state  of  civilization  among  the  Gombroonians  became  a 
subject  of  perpetual  sarcasm  on  the  part  of  the  Tigro- 
sylvanian  monarch.  The  lowest  depth  of  De  Quincey's 
degradation  in  the  matter  was  when  his  brother,  having 
been  reading  an  extract  from  Monboddo,  informed  him 
gravely  that  he  had  ascertained  that  the  Gombroonians 
were  still  in  the  primitive  condition  of  mankind,  not 
having  advanced  so  far  as  even  to  acquire  those  sedentary 
habits  the  continuance  of  which  through  ages  would 
remove  their  tails,  and  advised  him  to  issue  an  edict  re- 
quiring them  all  to  sit  for  at  least  six  hours  every  day — 
which,  he  said,  though  it  could  not  do  much,  would  make 
a  beginning.  It  was  the  same  in  all  the  other  relations 
between  the  imperious  young  sultan  of  the  family  and  his 
junior  brothers  and  sisters.  In  his  pyrotechnics  for  their 
amusement,  his  lectures  to  them  on  chemistry  and  natural 
philosophy,  his  dramatic  recitations,  he  was  always  lord- 
paramount,  and  they  were  his  thralls.  Of  De  Quincey 
27 


12  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

himself  his  opinion,  frankly  intimated  from  the  first,  was 
that  he  was  physically  contemptible  and  mentally  an  idiot, 
though  with  some  good  moral  qualities.  Of  the  truth  of 
this  opinion,  communicated  so  authoritatively,  De  Quincey 
says  he  had  at  first  no  doubt.  It  coincided  with  that  idea 
of  himself  into  which  he  had  settled  in  those  moping  days 
of  childish  melancholy  and  reverie  which  his  brother's 
arrival  in  Greenhay  had  disturbed;  and  he  would  have 
"been  only  too  glad  if  "  that  solid  foundation  of  utter  des- 
picableness"  to  which  he  had  learned  to  trust  had  been 
left  unshaken.  On  the  whole,  he  thinks,  it  was  perhaps 
well  that  it  was  shaken.  Left  to  himself  with  his  other 
young  brothers  and  sisters,  he  might  have  moped  on  till 
the  taint  of  consumption  had  been  developed  in  him  ;  and 
his  vehement  elder  brother's  discipline  had  acted  as  a 
rough  febrifuge. 

Meanwhile  the  lessons  with  the  Rev.  Mr.  S.  H.  had 
been  sufiiciently  profitable.  A  conscientious  man,  though 
decidedly  dull,  he  had  grounded  De  Quincey  well  in 
Latin,  and  entered  him  in  Greek;  and  there  had  been, 
moreover,  a  special  excrescence  from  the  tutorship,  which, 
though  irksome,  had  been  beneficial.  Mr.  H.  had  a 
stock  of  three  hundred  and  thirty  sermons,  each  about 
sixteen  minutes  long,  which,  at  the  rate  of  two  sermons 
every  Sunday,  served  as  spiritual  nutriment  for  his  con- 
gregation for  a  cycle  of  three  years.  The  De  Quincey 
family  having  to  come  in  their  carriage  from  Greenhay  to 
church,  it  was  only  the  forenoon  sermon  that  the  boy 
heard;  but  of  this  he  was  expected  regularly  to  give  in  a 
correct  abstract  in  the  course  of  the  week.  As  the  tutor 
did  not  allow  notes  to  be  taken,  the  exercise  of  memory 
was  of  lasting  benefit.  To  these  results  of  the  tutorship 
add  the  results  of  the   continued  readings  of  the  boy 


t]  PARENTAGE,  INFAKCY,  AND  CHILDHOOD.  13 

through  the  three  years  and  a  half,  whether  in  connexion 
with  the  lessons  or  independently.  As  before,  he  dwells 
on  individual  passages  that  had  impressed  him.  One 
passage  that  sank  into  him  with  a  mystic  sense  of  power 
was  the  phrase  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  *'  Belshazzar  the 
king  made  a  great  feast  to  a  thousand  of  his  lords." 
Another  instance  is  even  more  remarkable.  No  reader  of 
De  Quincey  but  must  have  observed  how  frequent  and 
important  a  word  in  his  vocabulary  is  the  word  Pariah, 
meaning  "  social  outcast,"  and  what  a  hold  had  been  taken 
of  his  imagination  by  the  idea  that  an  immense  propor- 
tion of  the  men  and  women  of  the  world,  in  all  ages  and 
all  lands,  had  belonged  to  the  class  of  Pariahs,  the  so- 
cially outcast  for  one  reason  or  another,  the  despised,  the 
unrespectable,  the  maltreated  and  down-trodden.  Well, 
this  idea,  if  his  own  dating  is  to  be  trusted,  had  been 
fixed  in  him  irrevocably  even  in  the  present  early  period 
of  his  life.  It  was  implanted  in  him  first  by  the  ineffable 
feeling  of  sublimity  which  he  attached  to  those  lines  in 
the  Epilogue  to  the  second  book  of  the  Fables  of  Phae- 
drus  where  that  Latin  fabulist,  who  had  himself  been  a 
slave,  exulted  in  the  recollection  that  his  predecessor,  the 
Greek  slave  -^sop,  had  triumphed  by  his  genius  over  the 
circumstances  of  his  birth : 

"  ^sopi  ingenio  statuam  posuere  Attici, 
Servumque  collocarunt  aeterna  in  basi, 
Patere  honoris  scirent  ut  cunctis  viam, 
Nee  generi  tribui  sed  virtuti  gloriam.'" 

'  De  Quincey  quotes  only  the  first  two  lines  of  these  four,  translating 
them  "  A  colossal  statiie  did  the  Athenians  raise  to  .^^op,  and  a  poor 
pariah  slave  they  planted  upon  an  everlasting  pedestal."  The  rest  may 
run  "  This  they  did  in  acknowledgment  of  the  /act  that  the  path  of  hon' 
our  is  open  to  all,  and  that  glory  belongs  not  to  birth  but  to  worth." 


14  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

But  it  was  not  from  this  passage  alone,  nor  from  mere 
literature,  that  he  derived  the  idea  in  its  full  extension. 
It  chanced  that  in  the  house  of  a  certain  reverend  gen- 
tleman there  were  two  twin  girls,  his  daughters,  who  were 
deaf  and  scrofulous  and  reputed  to  be  all  but  idiots,  and 
whom  therefore  their  mother,  ashamed  of  them  and  dis- 
liking them,  kept  as  much  out  of  sight  as  possible,  using 
them  as  menial  drudges,  and  cruel  to  them  otherwise, 
while  the  father,  whatever  he  may  have  thought,  did  not 
interfere.  The  acute  boy,  prying  about  the  house,  and 
coming  to  know  and  pity  the  girls,  bad  laid  the  case  to 
heart.  Were  not  these  girls  also  Pariahs,  and  were  there 
not  other  concealed  varieties  of  Pariahs  in  Christian 
England  ? 

It  had  been  arranged  by  the  guardians  that  the  elder 
brother,  who  had  shown  a  talent  for  drawing,  should  go 
into  training  for  the  profession  of  an  artist  by  becoming 
pupil  to  the  distinguished  London  landscape-painter  and 
Royal  Academician,  De  Loutherbourg.  As  the  parting 
with  his  brother  was  to  be  a  new  starting  -  point  in  De 
Quincey's  life,  he  remembered  it  well,  the  more  by  token 
of  an  incident  of  the  very  last  morning  of  his  brother's 
stay  at  Greenhay.  It  was  a  splendid  June  morning,  before 
breakfast,  and  all  the  six  children  were  together  in  the 
grounds  in  front  of  the  house,  from  Sultan  William,  now 
in  his  sixteenth  year,  down  to  the  youngest.  William 
was  full  of  frolic,  with  the  two  girls  laughing  and  dancing 
beside  him,  and  the  baby  Henry  near  in  the  nurse's  arms ; 
Richard,  called  familiarly  "  Pink,"  the  next  to  De  Quincey 
in  age,  was  wheeling  lound  on  his  heel  at  some  distance ; 
while  De  Quincey  himself  was  standing  close  to  the  edge 
of  a  brook  which  bounded  the  grounds  on  that  part  where 
they  were  not  protected  from  the  lane  by  a  railing  and 


I.]  PARENTAGE,  INFANCY,  AND  CHILDHOOD.  15 

the  gates.  Suddenly  there  was  a  vast  uproar  in  the  lane, 
the  noise  of  a  shouting  and  running  mob  coming  nearer 
and  nearer,  explained  at  last  by  the  appearance  of  a  great 
dog,  much  ahead  of  his  pursuers,  and  panting  and  foaming 
at  the  mouth.  The  dog  tried  the  gates,  which  were  fort- 
unately shut ;  then  stood  for  a  moment  on  the  edge  of  the 
brook  directly  opposite  to  De  Quincey,  as  if  meditating  a 
leap  across ;  and  then,  amid  the  scare  of  the  children,  all 
except  the  intrepid  William,  who  taunted  and  challenged 
the  dog  to  come  over,  broke  away  again  along  the  lane, 
followed  by  the  long  hullabaloo  of  men  and  boys,  with 
guns,  sticks,  and  pitchforks.  It  was  a  mad  dog  from  a 
barracks,  which  had  already  that  morning  bitten  two 
horses.  He  led  his  pursuers  a  chase  of  many  miles  before 
he  was  killed.  One  of  the  two  horses  he  had  bitten  died 
afterwards  of  hydrophobia.  What  if  he  had  leaped  the 
brook  ? 


CHAPTER  n. 

BOYHOOD  AND  CHANGES  OF  SCHOOL,  WITH  A  TOUE  IN 
IRELAND. 

[1796-1802.] 

Some  time  in  1*796,  De  Quincey's  mother  having  made  up 
her  mind  to  live  at  Bath,  the  establishment  at  Greenhay 
was  broken  up,  and  the  house  and  grounds  were  sold. 
After  being  boarded  for  a  while  m  Manchester,  for  con- 
tinuation of  the  lessons  under  Mr.  S.  H.,  De  Quincey  fol- 
lowed his  mother  to  Bath,  and  was  entered  at  the  Gram- 
mar School  of  the  town,  then  presided  over  by  a  Mr.  Mor- 
gan, an  excellent  classical  scholar.  He  was  then  in  his 
twelfth  year,  and  was  to  have  as  one  of  his  school-fellows 
his  brother  Richard,  already  mentioned  by  his  nickname 
of  "  Pink,"  about  four  years  younger  than  himself,  and  a 
boy  of  exquisite  beauty,  and  of  a  sweet  gentleness  that 
made  him  the  most  absolute  contrast  to  the  terrible  Wil- 
liam. Of  that  young  hurricane  and  all  his  problematical 
capabilities  De  Quincey  had  seen  the  last.  He  died  of  ty- 
phus-fever soon  after  he  had  become  pupil  to  the  Acade- 
mician De  Loutherbourg. 

De  Quincey  remained  at  the  Bath  Grammar  School 
about  two  years.  From  the  first  he  had  the  reputation  of 
a  little  prodigy  in  it,  especially  in  Latin,  and  most  espe- 
cially for  Latin  verse-making.  In  this  accomplishment  he 
had  such  success  that  the  head-master  used  to  parade  his 


CHAP.n.]  CHANGES  OF  SCHOOL.  11 

exercises  publicly  by  way  of  reproacb  to  the  stiff  Latinity 
of  the  boys  of  the  first  form,  most  of  whom  were  five  or 
six  years  older.  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  at  first  some- 
what backward  in  Greek — on  which  account  he  had  been 
placed  under  the  second  of  the  Bath  School  masters,  rather 
than  with  the  more  advanced  boys  under  Mr.  Morgan  him- 
self. For  some  time  there  was  a  cabal  among  these  ad- 
vanced boys  against  the  little  interloper  who  was  snatch- 
ing from  them  the  honours  in  Latin.  On  the  whole,  how- 
ever, he  was  comfortable  enough,  and  was  rapidly  attain- 
ing an  unusual  facility  in  speaking  and  writing  Greek, 
when  an  accident  led  to  his  removal  from  the  school. 
The  most  exact  account  of  this  accident  is  found  in  a  boy- 
ish letter  of  his  own,  which  chances  to  have  survived.  It 
is  dated  March  12, 1799,  and  was  addressed  to  his  sister 
Mary,  then  at  a  school  in  Bristol.  "  This  day  six  weeks," 
are  his  words,  "  as  we  were  up  saying  [repeating  our  les- 
sons], Mr.  M.  was  called  out,  and  so  forsooth  little,  or 
rather  big,  Mounseer  Collins  [one  of  the  under-masters] 
must  jump  into  the  desk.  It  happened  that  little  Harman 
minor  wanted  his  hat,  which  hung  up  over  Collins'  head. 
Wilbraham  asked  for  the  cane  to  reach  it  him,  which  Col- 
lins refused ;  and  at  the  same  time,  to  give  a  little  strength, 
I  suppose,  to  his  refusal,  and  to  enforce  his  authority  as  a 
master,  endeavoured  to  hit  him  on  the  shoulder  (as  ?ie 
says) :  but  how  shall  I  relate  the  sequel?  On  poor  Ego 
did  it  fall.  Say,  Muse,  what  could  inspire  the  cane  with 
such  a  direful  purpose  ?  But  not  on  my  shoulder,  on  my 
pate,  it  fell  —  unhappy  pate,  worthy  of  a  better  fate!" 
The  blow  on  the  head,  thus  playfully  described,  seemed 
serious  at  the  time.  For  some  weeks  De  Quincey  lay  in 
his  mother's  house  in  Bath,  attended  by  physicians  and 
under  severe  regimen.  In  the  weeks  of  his  gradual  recov- 
2 


18  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

ery  his  mother  read  to  him  steadily  till  he  could  resume 
reading  for  himself.  Among  the  books  thus  read  he 
mentions  Sir  William  Jones's  Asiatic  Researches,  Milner's 
Church  History,  Johnson's  Rambler,  Hoole's  Translations 
of  Ariosto  and  Tasso,  with  the  notable  addition  of  Par- 
adise Lost,  which  had  come  to  him,  strangely  enough,  in 
Bentley's  grotesque  edition.  At  the  same  time  he  and  his 
brother  Pink  had  lessons  in  French. 

Although  the  head-master  and  others  interested  in  Bath 
Grammar  School  tried  to  get  back  their  little  prodigy,  the 
mother  would  not  consent.  She  sent  him  and  his  brother 
Pink  to  a  private  school  at  Winkfield,  in  Wiltshire,  "  of 
which  the  chief  recommendation  lay  in  the  religious  char- 
acter of  the  master."  Here  he  remained  about  a  year,  not 
thinking  much  of  "  old  Spencer,"  the  master,  but  a  great 
favourite  with  the  Miss  Spencers,  and  with  the  thirty  or 
forty  boarders.  Fifty  years  afterwards,  two  of  his  school- 
fellows, clergymen  of  the  Church  of  England,  could  re- 
member him  at  Spencer's  as  a  most  obliging  and  compan- 
ionable little  fellow,  willing  to  help  any  of  the  boys  in 
their  Latin  or  Greek,  and  a  leader  in  their  amusements,  to 
which  he  would  always  give  a  literary  turn.  He  divided 
the  boys  for  their  mimic  fights  into  Greeks  and  Trojans, 
taking  the  part  of  Ulysses  himself;  and,  in  his  capacity 
of  contributor-in-chief  to  a  journal  carried  on  by  the  boys 
and  the  Miss  Spencers,  he  replied  in  pungent  English  verses 
to  a  challenge  by  the  boys  of  a  neighbouring  school.  It 
was  remembered  also  that,  when  his  mother  came  to  visit 
the  school,  and  the  boys  talked  of  her  as  a  friend  of  Han- 
nah More,  he  would  tell  them  with  pride  that  his  mother 
was  quite  as  clever  as  Hannah. 

Hardly  more  than  a  year  had  been  spent  at  Winkfield 
when  the  connexion  with  that  school  was  brought  to  an 


n.]  ACQUAINTANCE  WITH   LORD  WESTPOKT.  19 

end  by  an  invitation  to  De  Quincey  of  a  kind  which  his 
mother  did  not  see  fit  to  refuse.  During  the  time  of  the 
convalescence  at  Bath,  in  the  spring  of  1799,  an  acquaint- 
ance had  sprung  up  between  De  Quincey  and  young  Lord 
Westport,  the  only  child  of  John-Denis,  third  Earl  of  Alta- 
mont  of  the  Irish  peerage,  afterwards  Marquis  of  Sligo. 
The  boy,  whom  De  Quincey  represents  as  almost  exactly 
of  his  own  age,  but  whom  the  peerage  books  represent  as 
considerably  younger,  had  been  then  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Bath,  with  his  tutor,  Mr.  Grace.  He  and  his  tutor  had 
been  asked  to  Mrs.  De  Quincey's  house;  and  now,  after 
more  than  a  year,  during  which  his  young  lordship  had 
been  at  Eton,  there  came  the  invitation  we  speak  of.  It 
was  an  invitation  to  join  Lord  Westport  at  Eton  and  ac- 
company him  in  a  long  holiday  on  his  father's  estates  in 
county  Mayo,  in  the  West  of  Ireland.  Arrangements  hav- 
ing been  duly  made,  De  Quincey  did  set  out  for  Eton  in 
the  summer  of  1800,  to  begin  a  ramble  and  round  of  visits 
in  England  and  Ireland,  which  extended  over  four  or  five 
months. 

Eton  itself  was  a  good  beginning.  That  classic  town, 
as  all  the  world  ought  to  know,  is  really  part  and  parcel 
of  Windsor,  within  whose  royal  precincts  is  Frogmore,  a 
seat  of  royalty  subsidiary  to  Windsor  Castle.  Now,  as 
George  III.  and  his  Queen,  with  the  Princesses,  were  at 
Frogmore  in  the  summer  of  1800,  and  as  Lord  Westport 
not  only  had  the  run  of  Frogmore  grounds,  but  was  spe- 
cially known  to  the  royal  family,  as  the  son  and  heir-appar- 
ent of  the  Earl  of  Altamont,  and  as  grandson  by  his  moth- 
er of  the  lately  deceased  Earl  Howe,  the  famous  Admiral, 
what  was  to  prevent  De  Quincey,  in  such  good  company, 
from  having  an  interview  with  his  Majesty  himself  ?  This, 
lie  tells  us,  actually  occurred.    The  King,  recognizing  Lord 


20  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Westport  in  one  of  the  Frogmore  walks,  stopped  him  and 
talked  with  him  a  little,  and  then,  turning  to  his  compan- 
ion, whose  name  he  had  somehow  already  heard,  asked 
whether  he  too  was  at  Eton,  and  whether  his  father  was 
alive,  and  whether  his  mother  thought  of  sending  him  to 
Eton  —  a  capital  school,  none  better!  —  and  whether  his 
family  was  of  French  Huguenot  descent.  To  all  which 
De  Quincey  returned,  he  says,  brief  and  modest  answers, 
only  throwing  a  little  energy  into  his  repudiation  of  any 
recent  French  origin,  and  informing  his  Majesty  that  the 
English  De  Quinceys  were  as  old  as  the  Conquest,  and 
were  mentioned  in  the  very  earliest  of  English  books,  Rob- 
ert of  Gloucester's  Metrical  Chronicle.  "  I  know,  I  know," 
said  the  King,  with  a  smile,  as  if  he  remembered  such  a 
book  in  his  library,  but  did  not  like  to  commit  himself  on 
the  subject  with  such  a  knowing  little  shrimp ;  and  the 
interview  ended,  the  two  boys  stepping  backward  a  few 
paces  and  bowing  profoundly,  while  his  Majesty  moved 
away.  This,  however,  was  not  De  Quincey's  last  sight  of 
the  King.  He  had  the  honour  of  being  invited,  with  Lord 
Westport,  to  one  or  two  of  the  fetes  which  the  Queen  was 
then  giving  at  Frogmore,  and  did  attend  one  of  them — in 
a  travelling-dress,  as  his  mother  heard  with  horror,  till  he 
explained  to  her  in  a  letter  that  his  travelling-dress  was  a 
very  good  one,  "  much  better  than  what  Lord  Westport 
had  on,"  and  that  in  such  a  crush  it  did  not  matter.  The 
stay  at  Eton  was  broken  by  a  run  to  London.  It  was  De 
Quincey's  first  sight  of  the  great  metropolis,  and  he  is 
punctual  in  dating  it  as  in  the  month  of  May. 

From  Eton,  where  De  Quincey,  as  he  informed  his  moth- 
er very  penitentially,  could  not  avoid  going  once  to  a  play 
in  Windsor  Theatre  to  oblige  Lord  Westport,  the  two  lads, 
with  the  tutor,  began  their  journey  for  Ireland  on  the 


|l]  tour  in  IRELAND.  21 

18th  of  July.  Travelling  through  North  Wales,  they 
reached  Holyhead,  where  the  tutor  was  to  leave  them.  At 
that  place  the  tutor,  who  had  taken  mysterious  offence  at 
something  or  other,  and  apparently  begun  to  have  doubts 
about  De  Quincey,  ceased  to  speak  with  either  of  the  lads, 
but  duly  saw  them  aboard  the  packet  that  was  to  take 
them  to  Dublin.  The  passage  of  thirty  hours,  the  arrival 
in  Dublin,  the  first  impressions  of  that  city,  and  the  vari- 
ous incidents  and  pleasures  of  the  fortnight  or  so  passed 
there,  are  described  at  considerable  length  in  the  subse- 
quent autobiographic  record.  It  was  an  unusually  inter- 
esting time  in  the  history  of  Ireland,  for  it  was  the  time 
of  the  completion  in  the  Irish  Parliament  of  the  Bill  for 
the  Union  of  Ireland  with  Great  Britain.  Introduced  to 
his  friend's  father,  the  Earl  of  Altamont,  "  a  very  fat  man, 
and  so  lame  that  he  is  obliged  to  have  two  servants  to  sup- 
port him  whenever  he  stirs,"  De  Quincey  had  access  to  all 
the  sights  and  demonstrations  of  the  crisis.  He  was  pres- 
ent at  the  splendid  ceremony  of  the  installation  of  the 
Knights  of  St.  Patrick ;  and  he  was  present  in  the  last  sit- 
tings of  the  Irish  House  of  Peers,  when  the  Union  Act 
was  passed.  He  saw  the  Lord  Lieutenant  Cornwallis,  Lord 
and  Lady  Castlereagh,  and  other  great  public  persons ;  and 
he  saw  the  surgings  in  the  streets  of  excited  Irish  mobs. 
From  such  personal  reminiscences  of  his  Dublin  visit  he 
deviates  into  a  general  essay  on  the  social  and  political 
state  of  Ireland  at  the  time,  with  particular  accounts  of  the 
two  recent  Irish  Rebellions,  &c. ;  and  it  is  when  we  are 
extricated  from  these  that  we  find  him  at  last,  about  the 
20th  of  August,  at  Lord  Altamont's  seat  of  Westport,  in 
Connaught.  There,  in  a  big  house,  with  but  a  slovenly 
collection  of  books  in  it,  but  with  wild  Irish  scenery  round 
about  for  excursions,  wild  Irish  horses  to  ride,  and  wilder 


22  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Irish  grooms  to  study,  he  spent  some  weeks  pleasantly 
enough,  coaching  Lord  Westport  at  odd  moments,  it  would 
seem,  in  Greek  and  Latin. 

One  starry  experience  dwelt  with  him  all  the  while.  In 
that  part  of  his  journey  from  Dublin  to  Connaught  which 
had  been  performed  on  the  Grand  Canal,  leading  from 
Dublin  to  Tullamore,  there  had  been  among  his  fellow- 
passengers  in  the  canal-boat  the  widowed  Countess  of  Er- 
rol,  in  de^p  mourning,  and  her  sister.  Miss  Blake.  Both 
ladies  were  of  Irish  birth ;  and  both  were  young,  beautiful, 
and  accomplished.  Introduced  by  Lord  Westport,  De 
Quincey  was  for  a  time  in  Elysium.  Mentioning  the  ren- 
contre in  a  letter  to  his  mother  at  the  time,  all  that  he 
says  is  that  "in  the  canal-boat  was  a  Miss  Blake,  a  sister 
of  the  present  Countess  Dowager  of  Errol,"  and  that  they 
"formed  an  acquaintance  and  talked  about  the  English 
poets  for  the  whole  afternoon."  It  is  in  the  Autobiogra- 
phy that  we  learn  the  whole  truth.  Miss  Blake,  with  her 
soft  eyes  and  soft  Irish  voice,  her  Irish  gaiety  and  afflu- 
ence in  talk,  had  impressed  him  as  he  had  never  been  im- 
pressed before.  "  From  this  day,"  he  says,  "  I  was  an 
altered  creature,  never  again  relapsing  into  the  careless 
irreflective  mind  of  childhood." 

Returning  from  Ireland  to  England  in  October,  1800, 
the  two  friends  parted  at  Birmingham ;  and  one  observes 
it  as  rather  curious  that  Lord  Westport  is  hardly  heard  of 
again  in  De  Quincey's  history,  whether  under  the  title  of 
Earl  of  Altamont,  which  he  could  assume  by  courtesy  be- 
fore the  year  closed,  in  consequence  of  his  father's  promo- 
tion to  the  Marquisate  of  Sligo,  or  under  that  of  Marquis 
of  Sligo,  which  was  his  own  from  1809  to  1845.  Mean- 
while we  are  not  quite  done  with  De  Quincey's  ramble. 
From  Birmingham,  as  instructed  by  a  letter  from  his 


n.]  AT  LAXTON. 


S8 


mother,  he  went  to  Laxton,  in  Northamptonshire,  where 
his  elder  sister  ah-eady  was.  It  was  the  seat  of  Lord  and 
Lady  Carbery,  the  latter  of  whom,  in  her  unmarried  condi- 
tion as  Miss  Watson,  a  wealthy  heiress,  had  long  been  an 
intimate  young  friend  of  his  mother's.  A  Lord  and  Lady 
Massey  were  also  staying  at  Laxton,  and  Lord  Carbery 
himself  arrived  from  Ireland;  and,  as  there  was  a  fine 
library  in  the  house,  with  all  the  appurtenances  of  luxuri- 
ous culture,  a  month  or  two  of  rest  in  such  English  seclu- 
sion was  very  acceptable  after  so  much  rough  Irish  loco- 
motion. Lady  Carbery,  a  handsome  woman  of  about  six- 
and-twenty,  was  abundantly  kind  to  the  boy,  both  for  his 
mother's  sake  and  his  own.  She  arranged  that  he  should 
have  daily  lessons  in  riding,  to  which  he  submitted,  with 
no  very  effective  result;  she  called  him  her  "Admirable 
Crichton,"  and  taxed  all  his  resources  of  acquired  knowl- 
edge; and  in  one  department  she  became  his  grateful 
pupil.  Having  imbibed  the  sentiments  of  the  Evangel- 
ical School  of  Religion,  with  Hannah  More  and  Mrs.  De 
Quincey  for  her  exemplars,  but  having  a  strong  and  in- 
quiring intellect,  she  had  begun  a  systematic  study  of 
Theology,  and  had  come  to  be  vexed  by  the  question 
whether  the  authorized  English  version  of  the  Bible  could 
be  relied  on  as  presenting  the  exact  doctrinal  truth  on  all 
points.  Her  young  adviser  having  assured  her  that  on 
some  points  it  could  not,  she  felt  as  if  her  salvation  might 
depend  on  her  having  a  Greek  New  Testament  and  a  Park- 
hurst's  Greek  Lexicon  beside  her ;  and  De  Quincey,  hav- 
ing encouraged  the  idea,  had  the  pleasure  of  setting  her 
agoing  in  her  Greek  studies.  Altogether  he  was  very 
happy  at  Laxton,  and  there  can  hardly  be  a  pleasanter 
picture  than  that  of  the  high-minded  young  matron  of  the 
mansion,  a  kind  of  English  variety  of  Goethe's  "Fair 


24  DE  QUmCET.  [chap. 

Saint,"  looking  after  her  youthful  guest,  on  the  one  hand, 
as  a  feeble  boy  that  needed  superintendence,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  finding  instruction  for  hours  in  listening  to 
his  suggestive,  eloquent,  and  prematurely  learned  talk. 

The  effects  upon  De  Quincey's  mind  of  his  long  ramble, 
with  the  varied  glimpses  it  had  given  him  of  the  actual 
world,  and  especially  of  an  aristocratic  section  of  it,  had 
been,  he  says,  something  extraordinary.  The  rate  of  his 
intellectual  expansion,  he  says,  was  no  longer  like  the  move- 
ment of  the  hour  hand  of  the  watch,  whose  advance,  though 
certain,  is  matter  of  inference,  but  was  like  the  visible  pace 
of  the  seconds  hand.  One  may  question  whether  a  matter- 
of-fact  person  would  not  rather  have  described  the  effects 
of  his  tour  and  its  incidents  as  perturbing  and  unsettling. 

Experience  seems  to  have  decided  that,  in  the  majority 
of  cases,  the  wisest  plan  for  parents  and  guardians  in  the 
education  of  a  boy  is  to  find  out  the  best  established 
routine  of  public  schooling  for  boys  in  his  circumstances, 
and  to  keep  to  that  inflexibly  through  all  its  stages  for  the 
usual  period.  This  seems  to  have  been  De  Quincey's  own 
belief.  Of  the  two  schools  he  had  been  at  he  greatly  pre- 
ferred Bath  Grammar  School ;  it  had  been  against  his  will 
that  he  had  been  removed  from  it ;  and  in  his  letters  to 
his  mother  from  Ireland  he  had  argued  earnestly  for  a  re- 
turn to  that  school,  if  to  any,  till  he  should  be  thought  of 
age  for  the  University.  In  any  case,  he  objected  to  being 
sent  to  another  private  school,  like  that  at  Winkfield.  "  I 
was  at  the  head  of  the  school  the  whole  time  I  was  there. 
No  one  but  myself  could  make  verses  and  all  those  kinds 
of  things ;  but  then  I  had  no  one  to  contend  with,  nor  any- 
thing higher  to  aspire  to.  The  consequence  was  that  my 
powers  entirely  flagged ;  my  mind  became  dormant  in  com- 
parison with  what  it  was  at  the  Bath  Grammar  School." 


n.]  MANCHESTER  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL. 


26 


These  remonstrances  were  so  far  attended  to  that,  when 
he  left  Lady  Carbery's  at  Laxton,  the  arrangement  of  his 
mother  and  guardians  was  that  he  should  not  be  sent  again 
to  any  private  school,  but  should  go  for  three  years  to  the 
Grammar  School  of  his  native  town  of  Manchester.  Their 
chief  reason  was  a  pecuniary  one.  Among  the  endow- 
ments of  Manchester  Grammar  School  were  certain  exhibi- 
tions by  which  boys  who  had  been  regularly  at  the  school 
for  three  full  years  could  be  sent  to  Brasenose  College, 
Oxford,  with  40/.  or  501.  a  year  guaranteed  them  for  seven 
years.  With  501.  a  year  added  to  his  patrimonial  inheri- 
tance of  150?.,De  Quincey  would  be  able,  in  his  nineteenth 
year,  to  go  to  Oxford  in  proper  gentlemanly  style,  with  an 
annual  200?.  for  his  expenses. 

With  sighs  and  forebodings,  De  Quincey  did  go  to 
Manchester  Grammar  School,  some  time  late  in  1800,  for 
his  three  years  of  drudgery.  His  account  of  the  school, 
and  of  the  head-master,  Mr.  Lawson,  in  whose  house  he 
was  boarded,  is  far  from  unfriendly  on  the  whole.  Mr. 
Lawson,  though  in  his  declining  years,  and  not  quite  at 
ease  with  his  own  head  boys  in  their  higher  Greek  read- 
ings, was  kind,  conscientious,  and  exemplary ;  the  school 
was  an  ancient  and  rich  one,  with  historical  traditions  and 
good  appliances  and  accommodations ;  the  discipline  was 
maintained  entirely  by  moral  means,  which  was  rather  rare 
at  that  time ;  and  the  boarders,  with  whom  De  Quincey 
had  principally  to  associate,  were  mostly  Lancashire  youths 
of  good  manners  and  principles,  with  a  collective  amount 
of  knowledge  and  ability  among  them,  especially  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  which  rather  surprised  the  new-comer  at 
first.  He  had  a  pleasant  little  room  at  the  top  of  the 
house,  and  books  at  will  by  a  subscription  to  the  Man- 
chester library.  But  there  were  objections.  He  does 
C    2* 


20  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

not  positively  include  among  these  the  fact  that  many 
of  the  day-boys  in  the  school  were  sons  of  artisans,  some 
of  them  even  having  "  sisters  that  were  menial  servants," 
but  he  mentions  the  fact;  and  he  admits  generally  that 
the  whole  atmosphere  of  Manchester,  where  he  could  not 
stir  out-of-doors  without  being  "nosed  by  a  factory,  a 
cotton -bag,  a  cotton  dealer,  or  something  else  allied  to 
that  detestable  commerce,"  had  become  insufferably  un- 
congenial. It  was,  however,  the  monotony  of  the  school 
life  itself  that  put  him  out  of  spirits — the  sight  day  after 
day  of  the  same  bare,  white-washed  walls,  the  dull  repeti- 
tion from  day  to  day  of  petty  linguistic  tasks  that  had 
no  stimulus  for  him  now,  and  were  far  beneath  his  ca- 
pacity. Above  all,  the  total  deprivation  of  physical  exer- 
cise inflicted  on  Mr.  Lawson's  boarders  by  his  absurd  system 
of  regulating  their  hours  from  morning  to  evening,  with 
"  callings-over "  even  in  the  intervals  for  meals  and  rest, 
had  a  ruinous  effect  on  De  Quincey's  health.  For  some 
time  he  had  been  enabled  to  bear  up  against  the  compli- 
cated miseries  by  accidental  compensations.  Lady  Car- 
bery  had  been  in  Manchester  for  some  months,  with  a 
portion  of  her  household,  just  after  his  entry  into  the  new 
school ;  a  venerable  old  clergyman  of  the  town,  of  Sweden- 
borgian  views,  and  author  of  various  Swedenborgian  tracts, 
had  taken  a  fancy  for  the  extraordinary  lad  and  his  con- 
versation, and  liked  him  to  call ;  and,  in  one  or  two  runs 
to  Liverpool,  an  acquaintance  had  been  struck  up  with 
the  club  of  literati  of  which  that  town  could  then  boast, 
and  of  which  Roscoe,  and  Dr.  Currie,  the  biographer  of 
Bums,  were  the  chiefs.  But,  after  a  year  and  a  half  at 
the  school,  the  prospect  of  another  year  and  a  half  be- 
came intolerable.  In  a  letter  to  his  mother,  still  extant, 
he  pleads  most  pitifully  for  his  immediate  removal.     He 


n.]  MANCHESTER  GBAMMAR  SCHOOL.  27 

enumerates,  and  emphasizes  in  italic  words,  his  five  indi- 
vidual causes  of  complaint,  and  then  rolls  them  all  in  char- 
acteristic fashion  into  one  collective  sixth.  How  could 
a  person  be  happy,  he  asks,  or  even  simply  easy,  "in  a 
situation  which  deprives  him  of  health,  of  society,  of 
amusement,  of  liberty,  of  congeniality  of  pursuits,  and 
which,  to  complete  the  precious  picture,  admits  of  no 
variety  P^  Even  this  pitiful  pleading  was  of  no  avail,  and 
De  Quincey  was  driven  to  a  desperate  resolution.  He  re- 
solved to  run  away.  After  brooding  over  the  resolution 
for  some  time,  and  procuring  the  necessary  funds  from 
Lady  Carbery,  who,  knowing  nothing  of  her  young  friend's 
purpose,  sent  him  lOl.  in  answer  to  his  application  by  let- 
ter for  5^.,  he  carried  it  into  effect  by  slipping  out  of  Mr. 
Lawson's  house  early  one  morning  in  July,  1802.  He 
had  an  English  poet  in  one  pocket,  and  an  odd  volume 
of  Euripides  in  the  other.  He  was  then  close  on  seven- 
teen years  of  age. 
28 


CHAPTER  IIL 

VAGRANCY   IN   NOKTH    WALES    AND    IN    LONDON, 
[1802-1803.] 

De  Quincey's  first  intention,  when  he  had  made  up  hia 
mind  to  run  away  from  Manchester  School,  was  to  wander 
towards  the  district  of  the  English  Lakes.  The  magnet 
that  attracted  him  thither  was  Wordsworth,  some  of  whose 
poems  he  had  recently  read.  Oh,  to  be  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  that  man,  to  see  the  house  in  which  he  dwelt,  the 
scenes  amid  which  he  moved ;  perhaps  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  himself !  Alive,  however,  to  the  absurdity  of  any  such 
approach  to  Wordsworth  in  the  character  of  a  runaway 
school-boy,  and  also  to  the  duty  of  some  communication 
first  of  all  with  his  mother,  he  had  determined  to  run  the 
risks  involved  in  the  latter  course.  As  his  mother  had 
by  this  time  got  tired  of  Bath,  and  transferred  herself  to 
a  house  in  Chester,  called  the  Priory,  the  communication 
was  not  diflBcult.  Two  days  of  walking  carried  him  over 
the  forty  miles  that  separated  Manchester  from  Chester; 
and,  after  some  hovering  about  the  house,  of  which  he 
gives  a  whimsical  account,  the  meeting  took  place.  His 
mother,  with  her  notions  and  habits  of  decorum,  looked 
upon  the  occurrence,  he  says,  "  much  as  she  would  have 
done  upon  the  opening  of  the  seventh  seal  in  the  Revela- 
tions ;"  but  it  chanced  that  another  relative  was  at  hand 
who  took  a  lighter  view  of  the  affair.    This  was  his  uncle, 


CHAP.iu.]  VAGRANCY  IN  NORTH  WALEa  29 

Colonel  Thomas  Penson,  his  mother's  only  surviving  broth- 
er, home  from  India  on  a  three  years'  furlough,  and  quar- 
tered for  the  time,  with  his  horses  and  Bengalee  servants, 
at  the  Priory.  Colonel  Penson,  a  kindly  man  of  the 
world,  saw  nothing  unnatural  in  the  desire  of  a  youth  to 
elope  from  the  tedium  of  school ;  and,  by  his  advice,  it 
was  arranged  that  De  Quincey,  if  he  did  not  choose  to  re- 
main at  the  Priory,  should  have  a  guinea  a  week  allowed 
him  for  a  while,  with  liberty  to  wander  about  and  enjoy 
himself  on  that  basis. 

From  July  to  November,  1802,  we  see  him  wandering 
about  North  Wales,  from  town  to  town,  from  village  to 
village,  from  country-inn  to  country-inn,  having  various 
little  adventures  and  picking  up  random  new  acquaint- 
ances by  the  way,  all  the  while  making  his  guinea  a  week 
go  as  far  as  it  could,  and  hitting  on  ingenious  devices  for 
that  end.  The  chief  was  that  of  alternating,  according  to 
whim  and  weather,  between  the  more  expensive  style  of 
living,  at  the  rate  of  about  half  a  guinea  a  day,  necessary 
if  he  went  to  the  better  inns,  and  the  incredibly  cheap 
living  then  possible  in  Wales  if  one  lodged  in  the  cottages 
of  the  hospitable  and  unsophisticated  Welsh  peasantry,  or 
snatched  a  meal  somewhere  in  a  long  walk  and  bivou- 
acked through  the  night  among  ferns  and  furze.  It  was, 
he  says,  a  most  pleasant  existence,  an  existence  of  breezy 
freedom,  with  perpetual  delight  from  the  mountain 
scenery,  the  sylvan  nooks,  the  rushing  brooks,  the  pic- 
turesque evening  groups  of  the  villagers  gathered  round 
their  harpers.  But  the  sting  of  some  unsatisfied  craving, 
the  fatal  longing  in  his  nature  to  break  away  from  the 
customary  and  respectable,  and  to  dare  the  forbidden 
and  indefinite,  carried  him  suddenly  out  of  those  Welsh 
solitudes.     He  would  give  up  his  guinea  a  week,  cut  that 


80  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

remaining  bond  between  him  and  Ms  mother  and  guar- 
dians, and  bury  himself  in  the  world  of  London.  There 
he  would  find  books  and  society ;  there  he  would  find  he 
knew  not  what ;  there  he  would  find — at  least  so  he  had 
heard — Jew  money-lenders,  who  might  be  willing  to  ad- 
vance him  200^.  on  his  expectations. 

It  was  late  in  November,  1802,  when,  having  borrowed 
twelve  guineas  from  two  lawyer  friends  in  Oswestry,  De 
Quincey,  after  eight-and-twenty  hours  on  the  coach  from 
Shrewsbury,  was  deposited  in  the  streets  of  London. 
Here  what  months  he  passed — what  months  of  wild, 
haggard,  Bohemian  roaming  and  staggering  from  worse 
to  worse!  He  had  lost  no  time  in  applying  to  a  Jew 
money-lender  named  Dell ;  but  Dell  was  never  himself  to 
be  seen  in  such  cases,  and  the  negotiation  had  to  be  with 
Dell's  devil,  or  legal  factotum.  This  was  a  low  attorney, 
called  Brunell,  who  had  for  his  place  of  business  a  house 
in  Greek  Street,  Soho,  at  the  corner  of  Soho  Square,  with 
precautionary  chains  on  the  doors,  and  loop-holes  through 
which  those  who  knocked  could  be  surveyed  before  they 
were  admitted.  As  we  read  the  description  of  this  house 
in  Greek  Street,  with  all  its  rooms  unoccupied  and  unfur- 
nished, save  Mr.  Brunell's  own  sanctum,  and  some  den  for 
his  athletic  clerk,  Pyment,  and  of  Mr.  Brunell's  arrivals 
in  it  every  morning  from  no  one  knew  where,  and  his  dis- 
appearances in  the  evening,  when  his  sanctum  was  care- 
fully locked  and  the  empty  house  was  left  in  the  sole 
keeping  of  a  poor  little  wretch  of  a  girl,  ten  years  of  age, 
who  slept  on  straw  as  near  as  she  could  to  the  street-door, 
we  feel  as  if  we  were  in  the  midst  of  a  novel  by  Dickens. 
With  Brunell  himself  De  Quincey  became  very  familial 
by  frequent  visits,  and  found  him,  disreputable  though  he 
was,  a  very  kindly  person,  and  with  a  wonderful  passion 


m]  VAGRANCY   IN  LONDON.  81 

for  literature  and  knowledge,  the  survival  from  some 
happier  time  when  he  had  hopes  of  another  career  than 
that  of  a  devil  for  money-lenders.  But  Brunell  could  do 
nothing  himself  in  the  matter  of  the  iidvance,  for  there 
was  the  invisible  Dell  in  the  background.  The  policy  of 
Dell,  in  such  cases,  was  that  of  delay — delay  for  the 
necessary  investigations,  for  whetting  the  appetite  of  the 
apolicant,  and  for  exacting  charges  for  papers,  stamps, 
and  one  knows  not  what.  Thus  the  lad,  though  living  as 
parsimoniously  as  he  could  in  lodgings,  was  brought  to 
his  last  guinea,  and  it  was  an  act  of  charity  when  Brunell 
consented  to  let  him  use  the  house  in  Greek  Street  as  his 
sleeping  asylum  at  nights.  There,  sharing  a  floor  in  the 
void  tenement  with  the  little  wretch  of  a  servant-girl,  to 
whom  his  advent  was  a  godsend,  as  a  deliverance  from 
her  terrors  of  loneliness,  he  did  sleep,  night  after  night, 
for  some  indefinite  period,  glad  to  pick  up  stray  crusts 
in  the  morning  from  Brunell's  breakfast-table.  But,  his 
presence  in  the  house  during  the  day  being  undesirable, 
he  had  to  be  off  every  morning,  to  "  sit  in  the  parks  or 
elsewhere,"  or  prowl  about  the  streets,  as  he  chose.  And 
what  streets  he  thus  came  to  know,  and  what  eternal  cir- 
cuits among  the  same  streets!  Regent  Street  then  was 
not;  and  his  main  range  was  the  great  thoroughfare  of 
Oxford  Street,  with  the  streets  to  the  north  of  it  as  far  as 
the  New  Road,  and  the  maze  of  streets  on  the  other  or 
southern  side  as  far  as  the  line  of  Coventry  Street  and 
Piccadilly.  Within  those  bounds  he  was  a  peripatetic 
through  days  of  which  he  kept  no  reckoning,  and  often 
late  at  nights,  till  the  watchmen  began  to  recognise  his 
figure,  and  would  sometimes  rouse  him  roughly  as  he  sat 
on  door-steps.  As  was  natural,  he  became  acquainted 
with  other  peripatetics,  the  "  street-walkers "  in   another 


82  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

sense.  With  this  class  of  unfortunates,  and  with  not  a 
few  individuals  among  them,  he  tells  us,  his  relations  were 
intimate  enough,  though  all  in  perfect  innocence.  One  in 
chief  he  could  never  forget.  Oh!  that  Ann  of  Oxford 
Street,  the  poor  girl  of  sixteen,  whose  simple  and  sad  his- 
tory he  had  come  to  know,  whose  goodness  of  heart  shone 
out  even  in  her  degradation,  with  whom  it  had  become 
his  daily  habit  to  go  about  by  appointment,  and  who  had 
once  saved  his  life,  when  he  had  fainted  from  exhaustion, 
by  running  for  wine  and  stimulants  and  fetching  them  for 
him  out  of  her  own  scanty  money ! 

A  favourable  impression  had  been  at  last  produced  on 
Dell  by  proofs  of  De  Quincey's  former  intimacy  with 
Lord  Altamont  and  the  Marquis  of  Sligo.  If  Mr.  De 
Quincey  could  fortify  his  own  mere  personal  security  by 
getting  Lord  Altamont  to  be  his  co-security,  Mr.  Dell 
would  not  mind  lending  him  200^.  or  even  300/.  A  casual 
encounter  with  an  old  family  friend  in  Albemarle  Street 
having  at  the  same  time  provided  De  Quincey  with  a  little 
ready  cash,  he  bade  Ann  farewell  for  a  day  or  two,  and 
took  the  coach  for  Eton  to  broach  the  matter  to  Lord  Al- 
tamont. Unfortunately  his  lordship  had  just  left  Eton  for 
Cambridge ;  and  all  that  De  Quincey  could  effect  was  a 
provisional  arrangement  with  another  young  nobleman  at 
Eton,  which  he  thought  might  answer  Mr.  Dell's  purpose. 
"When  he  returned  to  London  Ann  was  gone !  He  never 
saw  her  or  heard  of  her  more.  All  his  life  afterwards  that 
girl  was  to  be  in  his  thoughts.  Ah !  poor  Ann  of  Oxford 
Street,  what  had  become  of  her  ?  Had  she  gone  into  some 
ruflBanly  keeping,  and  might  she  be  still  alive  ;  or  had  that 
cough  which  he  had  observed  in  her  done  its  merciful  work, 
and  was  her  young  frame  at  rest,  though  but  in  a  pauper's 
grave,  in  some  dank  corner  of  a  London  church-yard  ? 


ra.]  TAGRANCY  IN  LONDON.  83 

Is  all  this  trae,  or  was  De  Quincey  romancing  ?  He  was 
himself  aware  that  there  might  be  some  such  suspicion ; 
and  when,  immediately  after  the  first  publication  of  his 
Confessions,  some  of  his  critics  were  taking  them  for  in- 
genious fiction,  he  was  very  serious  in  his  efforts  to  unde- 
ceive them.  He  had  not  told  the  whole  truth  about  his 
London  vagrancy,  he  said,  because  that  was  impossible,  but 
he  had  told  nothing  but  the  truth.  Such  an  assurance 
ought  itself  to  count  for  something;  but  there  is  more. 
In  early  private  letters  of  De  Quincey,  published  by  Mr. 
Page,  we  have  the  means  of  checking  portions  of  his  sub- 
sequent autobiographical  writings;  and,  as  in  all  cases 
where  this  check  can  be  applied  the  correspondence  be- 
tween the  original  memorials  and  the  later  narrative  is 
strikingly  exact,  a  slight  occasional  haziness  of  date  ex- 
cepted, the  rest  of  the  narrative  is  entitled  to  the  benefit 
of  the  fact.  In  short,  though  there  may  be  a  little  min-r 
gling  of  the  Dichtung  with  the  Wahrheit,  De  Quincey's 
account  of  his  days  of  London  wretchedness  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  authentic.  And  why  not?  True,  it  could  only 
have  been  a  most  odd,  unpractical  little  creature  that  could 
have  got  himself  into  such  conditions,  or  that,  once  in 
them,  could  not  have  extricated  himself.  But  are  there 
not  such  queer  young  eccentrics  in  the  world  even  now — 
creatures  of  cleverness  touched  with  some  craze  or  pecu- 
liarity, which  makes  them  a  puzzle  to  their  friends,  and 
which,  while  incapacitating  them  for  the  most  obvious 
acts  of  reasonableness  natural  to  ordinary  people,  leads 
them  sometimes  to  acts  at  which  ordinary  people  stare? 
That  eccentricity  of  De  Quincey  which  was  to  be  a  life- 
long characteristic,  and  even  that  form  of  eccentricity 
which  was  to  be  peculiarly  his  in  after-life — a  constant 
shy  timorousness,  a  perpetual  looking  backward  over  his 


84  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap.  m. 

shoulder  for  some  terrible  danger  that  he  had  escaped,  but 
that  was  still  dogging  him — seems  to  have  been  first  de- 
veloped in  those  days  of  his  strange  London  experiences 
in  his  eighteenth  year.  When  Carlyle  knew  him,  long 
afterwards,  and  when  his  small  stature,  boyish  face,  gentle 
demeanour,  and  beautiful  silvery  talk  were  the  most  ob- 
vious things  about  him  to  first  observation,  something 
more,  Carlyle  thought,  was  physiognomically  discernible. 
*^JEJccovi !  look  at  him :  this  child  has  been  in  Hell." 

The  proposed  substitute  for  Lord  Altamont's  guarantee 
of  co-security  not  being  satisfactory  to  Mr.  Dell,  De  Quin- 
cey  was  at  the  extreme  of  despair,  when,  by  some  unex- 
plained concatenation  of  circumstances,  he  was  discovered 
and  reclaimed  by  his  friends.  He  went  back  to  Chester, 
to  reside  for  some  time  with  his  mother  in  the  Priory. 
His  Indian  uncle  was  still  there,  and  it  was  some  tetchy  but 
well-intentioned  remark  of  this  good  gentleman  in  a  mo- 
ment of  argument  that  induced  De  Quincey  to  close  with 
a  shabby  offer  made  by  his  guardians,  to  the  effect  that  he 
might  go  to  the  University  if  he  liked,  but  should  not 
have  a  farthing  more  than  100^.  a  year.  On  this  allow- 
ance, in  the  autumn  of  1803,  as  nearly  as  the  date  can  be 
guessed,  he  went  to  Worcester  College,  Oxford. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

MAIKLT    AT    OXFORD,    WITH    VISITS    TO    LONDON    AND    THE 

LAKES. 

[1803-1809.] 

Op  De  Quincey's  Oxford  life  very  little  is  known.  There 
is  a  casual  hint  from  himself  that  he  had  made  a  mistake 
in  his  choice  of  a  college.  Had  he  gone  to  Brasenose,  as 
would  have  happened  if  he  had  remained  for  the  necessary 
time  at  Manchester  Grammar  School,  he  would  have  had  a 
smooth  and  properly  arranged  introduction  to  the  academ- 
ic life,  whereas  in  Worcester  College  he  was  an  isolated 
stranger,  left  to  shift  for  himself.  All  that  the  head  of 
the  college,  Dr.  Cotton,  could  afterwards  remember  of  him 
was  summed  up  in  a  few  sentences.  "During  the  period 
of  his  residence,"  says  Dr.  Cotton,  "  he  was  generally 
known  as  a  quiet  and  studious  man.  He  did  not  frequent 
wine-parties,  though  he  did  not  abstain  from  wine ;  and 
he  devoted  himself  principally  to  the  society  of  a  German, 
named  Schwartzburg,  who  is  said  to  have  taught  him  He- 
brew. He  was  remarkable  even  in  those  days  for  his  rare 
conversational  powers,  and  for  his  extraordinary  stock  of 
information  upon  every  subject  that  was  started."  Alto- 
gether, though  he  had  some  acquaintances  in  different  col- 
leges, and  was  known  among  them  as  a  very  uncommon 
person,  he  seems  rather  to  have  crept  through  the  Uni- 
versity quietly  than  to  have  made  any  stir  in  it,  keeping 


86  DE  QUINCET.  [chap. 

much  by  himself,  and  reading  prodigiously  in  lines  of  his 
own.  The  recluseness  was  not  owing  to  the  extreme  ne- 
cessity of  economy  which  his  guardians  had  tried  to  im- 
pose upon  him  when  they  fixed  his  allowance  at  only  100^. 
a  year.  That  had  been  evaded,  he  tells  us,  by  the  relent- 
ing of  his  Jewish  friend  in  London,  who  did  at  last  ad- 
vance him  the  sum  for  which  there  had  been  so  much 
negotiation.  He  could  thus  afford  himself  all  that  was 
needed  to  make  Oxford  studentship  fairly  comfortable,  in- 
cluding books,  a  run  to  London  now  and  then,  and  a  visit, 
in  vacation-time,  to  friends  in  Liverpool  or  elsewhere. 

The  lessons  from  the  German  Schwartzburg  were  of  some 
consequence.  They  were  not  in  Hebrew  merely.  Though 
he  had  received  some  general  notions  of  German  Litera- 
ture, and  especially  some  tempting  information  about  Jean 
Paul  Richter,  Hippel,  Hamann,  and  other  little-known  Ger- 
man writers,  from  an  accomplished  young  German  named 
De  Haren,  with  whom  he  had  formed  a  friendship  in  his 
Welsh  wanderings,  it  was  at  Oxford,  and  under  Schwartz- 
burg, that  he  first  set  himself  seriously  to  the  study  of 
German.  The  German  Philosophy,  as  well  as  the  German 
Literature,  attracted  him  thenceforward. 

Of  even  greater  importance  was  the  systematic  atten- 
tion he  now  began  to  bestow  on  English  Literature. 
Though  from  his  childhood  his  sensibilities  had  been  pow- 
erfully affected  by  "  the  greatness  of  our  own  literature," 
and  though  his  readings  in  English  poets  and  prose  writers 
had  been  extensive  and  varied,  it  was  at  Oxford  that  he 
first  felt  the  necessity  of  organizing  his  knowledge  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  and  regarding  it  no  longer  as  a  mere  splen- 
did phenomenon  or  sky  of  so  many  hundreds  of  scattered 
stars  of  different  degrees  of  brilliancy,  but  as  a  vast  and 
vital  whole  that  could  be  grasped  in  a  history.     Thence- 


XY.']  AT  OXFORD.  87 

forward,  while  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakspeare,  Bacon,  Mil- 
ton, Sir  Thomas  Browne,  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  others  of  his 
favourites  among  the  older  writers,  were  dearer  and  more 
distinct  to  him  than  ever  individually,  he  could  contem- 
plate that  great  flow  of  the  national  thought  through  suc- 
cessive centuries,  which,  though  it  seemed  to  eddy  round 
those  individualities  as  so  many  independent  and  inserted 
marvels,  had  really  caused  them  and  stationed  them  where 
they  were,  and  which,  after  its  farther,  and  in  his  eyes  less 
interesting,  course  through  the  eighteenth  century,  was  now 
again  becoming  glorious  in  Wordsworth  and  his  disciples. 
It  was  on  this  last  portion  of  the  long  history  of  English 
Literature,  the  portion  contemporary  with  himself,  that  De 
Quincey  fastened  his  regard  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  per- 
sonal concern.  He  had  by  this  time  put  himself  in  corre- 
spondence with  Wordsworth,  expressing  his  admiration 
and  indebtedness,  and  had  received  at  least  two  letters  of 
reply,  intimating  that  the  poet  was  not  indifferent  to  the 
recognition  of  such  a  hopeful  young  admirer,  and  would 
be  glad  to  see  him  at  a  convenient  opportunity.  More 
recently  he  had  been  mating  inquiries  after  Coleridge, 
whom  he  had  known  first  by  his  Ancient  Mariner,  pub- 
lished with  Wordsworth's  Lyrical  Ballads  in  1798,  but  to 
whom  he  was  now  drawn  also  by  interest  in  his  prose 
writings.  As  De  Quincey  had  already  concluded  with 
himself  that  it  would  never  be  in  the  element  of  verse  that 
his  own  genius  could  accomplish  anything  considerable  in 
literature,  if  he  should  ever  accomplish  anything  at  all,  the 
fact  that  Coleridge  was  a  prose  writer  and  philosopher,  as 
well  as  a  poet,  seems  to  have  whetted  the  desire  for  an 
immediate  meeting  with  him,  if  only  in  preparation  for 
the  more  formidable  and  less  accessible  Wordsworth.  He 
was,  therefore,  much  disappointed  at  finding,  in  1805,  that 


88  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Coleridge  had  left  the  Lakes,  and  had  gone  to  Malta  as 
Secretary  to  Sir  Alexander  Ball,  the  Governor  of  that 
island. 

One  other  fact  of  De  Quincey's  days  of  Oxford  student- 
ship is  expressly  recorded  by  himself.  It  was  then  that 
he  first  began  to  take  opium.  His  first  experience  of  the 
drug  was  on  a  dull,  rainy  Sunday  in  the  spring  or  autumn 
of  1804,  when,  being  on  one  of  his  visits  to  London,  and 
having  suffered  for  a  week  or  two  from  neuralgia,  he  took 
the  advice  of  a  friend  and  purchased  a  phial  of  the  tinct- 
ure of  opium  at  a  druggist's  shop  in  Oxford  Street,  near 
"  the  stately  Pantheon."  The  effect,  when  he  took  the 
first  dose  in  his  lodgings,  was  divine ;  and  from  that  mo- 
ment De  Quincey  was  an  experimenter  in  opium — never 
without  a  supply  of  the  drug  beside  him  in  one  or  other 
of  its  forms,  whether  in  the  solid  cakes  or  sticks  of  the 
dried  substance,  as  imported  from  Turkey,  Egypt,  Persia, 
or  India,  or  in  the  prepared  red-brown  liquid  known  as 
laudanum.  Nay,  more,  from  that  moment  he  was  the  apol- 
ogist for  opium,  skilled,  or  fancying  himself  skilled,  in  all 
its  effects,  and  distinguishing  its  negative  effects  in  the 
mere  relief  of  pain  from  its  positive  effects  as  an  intellect- 
ual stimulant  and  exhilarant.  He  suggests,  indeed,  that 
in  continuing  the  use  of  the  drug  after  its  first  service  to 
him  in  an  attack  of  neuralgia,  he  had  hit  by  blind  instinct 
on  the  specific  for  the  pulmonary  consumption  to  which 
he  was  liable  by  inheritance  from  his  father.  The  reports 
of  medical  authorities,  from  an  investigation  of  all  the  evi- 
dence, are  rather  to  the  effect  that  the  constitutional  dis- 
ease from  which  he  suffered  was  a  slow  or  intermittent  ul- 
ceration of  the  stomach,  brought  on,  perhaps,  by  bad  and 
insuflBcient  food  during  his  time  of  vagrancy  in  Wales  and 
London,  and  that  his  perseverance  in  the  use  of  opium  was 


IT.]  AT  OXFORD.  39 

due  originally  to  his  accidental  experience  of  its  effects  in 
allaying  those  "  gnawing  pains  in  the  stomach"  of  which, 
from  that  time  of  his  vagrancy,  he  complained  always  or 
periodically.  Enough  of  a  disagreeable  subject.  What 
concerns  us  at  present  is,  that  De  Quincey  avers  most  sol- 
emnly that,  though  he  took  opium  at  Oxford  from  1804 
onwards,  it  was  still  in  such  moderation  that  he  could  have 
broken  off  the  habit.  He  was  not  yet,  nor  for  some  years 
to  come,  a  slave  to  opium,  but  confined  himself  to  a  care- 
fully precalculated  opium  -  debauch,  as  he  calls  it,  about 
once  in  three  weeks.  The  probability  is  that  the  indul- 
gence added  to  his  queerness  among  the  Oxonians,  his  lik- 
ing for  solitary  reverie,  and  his  carelessness  of  academic 
routine  and  distinction. 

De  Quincey,  it  seems,  did  go  up  for  his  written  exami- 
nation for  the  degree  of  B.A.  The  fact  is  attested  by  one 
of  his  old  school-fellows  at  Winkfield,  who  had  gone  to 
Lincoln  College  while  De  Quincey  was  in  residence  in 
Worcester  College.  Dr.  Goodenough,  of  Christ  Church, 
says  this  authority,  was  wonderfully  struck  with  De  Quin- 
cey's  performance,  and  told  the  Worcester  College  people 
that  they  had  sent  up  the  cleverest  man  he  had  ever  en- 
countered, and  that,  if  he  did  as  well  in  his  vivd  voce  as  he 
had  done  on  paper,  he  would  carry  all  before  him.  But 
De  Quincey,  in  a  fit  of  shyness,  or  having  taken  some  of- 
fence, never  presented  himself  for  his  vivd  voce,  remained 
without  his  degree,  and,  indeed,  disappeared  from  Oxford 
for  some  time.  The  date  is  not  given,  but  it  seems  to  have 
been  in  1807.  His  name  remained  on  the  books  of  his 
college  till  1810;  but,  as  we  have  his  own  distinct  state- 
ment that  his  time  of  residence  was  from  1803  to  1808, 
we  have  to  suppose  only  a  year  of  effective  connexion  with 
the  University  after  1807,  and  that  broken  by  absences. 


40  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

He  liked  to  be  in  London,  where  he  now  counted  Charles 
Lamb  in  the  number  of  his  acquaintances,  and  where  he 
delighted  in  going  to  the  Opera  to  hear  Grassini  sing,  and 
in  rambling  among  the  markets  on  Saturday  nights ;  and 
he  had  entered  himself,  or  was  about  to  enter  himself,  as  a 
member  of  the  Middle  Temple,  with  a  view  to  eating  his 
terms  for  the  Bar.  His  mother  meanwhile  having  shifted 
'her  domicile  from  Chester  to  a  house  and  estate  called 
Westhay,  in  Somersetshire,  about  twelve  miles  from  Bris- 
tol, which  had  been  purchased  for  her  by  her  Indian  broth- 
er at  a  cost  of  12,000?.,  there  were  visits  also  to  that  part 
of  the  West  of  England,  with  renewed  confabulations  with 
Hannah  More  and  her  set.  What  is  of  especial  impor- 
tance in  De  Quincey's  biography,  however,  at  this  time  of 
the  close  of  his  residence  at  Oxford,  is  that  he  is  found 
then  indubitably  in  possession  of  a  good  deal  of  money. 
How  this  had  come  about  we  are  not  informed ;  but,  as  he 
had  attained  his  majority  in  1806,  we  are  to  fancy  either 
that  he  had  then  been  put  at  comparative  ease  by  becom- 
ing master  of  his  own  funds,  or  that  there  had  been  some 
new  and  enlarged  transaction  with  the  Jews,  converting 
the  whole  futurity  of  those  funds  into  a  present  capital. 
As  De  Quincey  speaks  of  his  transactions  with  the  Jews 
as  pretty  continuous,  or  as  repeated  from  time  to  time,  in 
his  earlier  life,  the  latter  supposition  is  likely  enough. 

The  improvement  of  De  Quincey's  pecuniary  circum- 
stances in  and  from  the  year  1807  connects  itself  more 
particularly  with  one  interesting  absence  of  his  from  Ox- 
ford in  the  latter  half  of  that  year.  Having  gone  into 
Somersetshire  in  the  course  of  the  summer,  and  having 
heard  that  Coleridge  had  returned  from  abroad,  and  was 
then  quartered  among  friends  at  Nether  Stowey,  in  that 
county,  he  went  in  search  of  the  great  man.     He  did  not 


ir.]  MEETING  WITH  COLERIDGE.  41 

find  him  at  Nether  Stowey,  but  came  upon  him  in  the 
town  of  Bridgewater,  where  he  was  staying,  with  his  wife 
and  his  three  young  children,  Hartley,  Derwent,  and  Sara, 
in  the  house  of  a  certain  family  of  Chubbs,  well-to-do 
descendants  of  Chubb  the  Deist.  It  was  a  memorable 
meeting.  The  "noticeable  man  with  large  grey  eyes," 
now  not  more  than  thirty-five  years  of  age,  but,  as  De 
Quincey  observed,  with  flabby  and  unhealthy  white  cheeks 
and  confused  and  abstracted  gait,  received  his  young  vis- 
itor very  courteously,  and  had  several  conversations  with 
him,  by  himself  and  in  company.  Though  the  elder 
opium-eater  and  the  younger  opium-eater  were  thus  to- 
gether, no  confidences  were  exchanged  on  that  subject, 
save  that  once,  when  laudanum  was  casually  mentioned  by 
De  Quincey,  it  was  with  an  emphasis  of  horror  that  Cole- 
ridge warned  him  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  that  drug. 
The  talk,  or  rather  Coleridge's  monologue,  was  on  all 
things  and  sundry,  and  De  Quincey  was  amazed,  even  be- 
yond expectation,  by  its  range  and  gorgeousness.  His 
veneration  for  Coleridge  became  a  kind  of  filial  affection ; 
and  when,  a  few  weeks  after,  Coleridge  went  with  his  fam- 
ily to  Bristol,  and  their  acquaintance  was  renewed  there, 
it  was  with  delight  that  De  Quincey  found  he  could  do 
the  sage  a  slight  piece  of  service.  Mrs.  Coleridge  and  the 
children  were  bound  for  the  Lakes,  to  be  domiciled,  as 
before,  with  Southey,  at  Greta  Hall,  Keswick ;  but,  as  Cole- 
ridge was  arranging  for  a  course  of  lectures  on  Poetry 
and  the  Fine  Arts,  to  be  delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution, 
in  Albemarle  Street,  London,  he  could  not  accompany 
them.  De  Quincey  offered  to  be  their  escort ;  and  in  Oc- 
tober, 1807,  the  party  set  out  from  Bristol  by  post-chaise. 
Travelling  by  stages,  and  with  some  little  stay  at  Liver- 
pool, they  reached  the  Lake  Country  by  a  route  which 
D     3 


42  DE  QTJINCEY.  [ohap. 

required  them  to  take  Wordsworth's  cottage  at  Grasmere 
as  their  resting-place  before  going  on  to  Southey's,  at 
Keswick.  Twice  had  De  Quincey  been  on  the  verge  of 
this  poetic  paradise  before,  but  both  times  he  had  retreat- 
ed with  a  nervous  shrinking  at  the  last  moment  from  the 
idea  of  presenting  himself  to  Wordsworth.  Now,  how- 
ever, in  his  character  of  convoy  to  Mrs.  Coleridge,  rather 
than  in  that  of  Wordsworth's  occasional  correspondent  in 
past  years,  he  did  behold  the  epoch-making  man,  received 
a  grasp  of  welcome  from  his  hand  at  his  own  door,  and 
became  his  temporary  guest.  For  two  days  he  was  in  the 
cottage,  along  with  Mrs.  Coleridge  and  her  children,  happy 
in  the  society  of  Wordsworth,  his  wi^,  and  his  sister  Dor- 
othy, and  making  his  observations  of  the  three ;  and  on 
the  third  day  there  began  that  excursion  of  all  the  seniors 
of  the  party  over  the  hills  in  a  cart,  which,  while  it  depos- 
ited Mrs.  Coleridge  at  her  destination  in  Southey's  house, 
gave  De  Quincey,  his  first  introduction  also  to  that  other 
famous  Lakist.  All  this  was  in  November,  1807  ;  before 
the  end  of  which  month  De  Quincey  was  back  in  Bristol, 
to  hear  of  the  completion  of  another  piece  of  kindness  he 
had  been  meditating  for  Coleridge.  The  profound  dejec- 
tion of  Coleridge,  the  state  of  "  cheerless  despondency " 
into  which  he  had  fallen,  and  out  of  which  his  splendid 
talks  were  evidently  but  leaps  and  refuges  of  despair,  had 
struck  his  young  friend ;  and,  having  ascertained  by  in- 
quiries that  the  main  immediate  cause  was  hopeless  dis- 
tress in  money  matters,  De  Quincey  bad  been  in  private 
communication  with  Cottle,  the  Bristol  bookseller,  on  the 
subject.  He  wanted  to  give  Coleridge  500^.,  a  sum  which 
all  Cottle's  representations,  with  questions  whether  he  was 
serious,  whether  he  could  afford  it,  whether  he  was  of  age, 
&c.,  could  not  persuade  him  to  reduce  below  300/.     That 


IV.]       IN  LONDON  AND  AT  THE  LAKEa       43 

sum  Coleridge  did  accept,  having  been  told  nothing  more 
by  Cottle  at  the  time  than  that  "  a  young  man  of  fortune 
who  admired  his  talents  "  wanted  to  make  him  a  present. 
Coleridge's  formal  receipt  for  the  money,  which  the  book- 
seller thought  it  right  to  take  for  his  own  exoneration^  is 
dated  November  12, 1807. 

Though  De  Quincey  includes  the  year  1808  in  the  time 
of  his  Oxford  residence,  the  records  show  him  to  have 
been  much  in  London  through  parts  of  that  year.  Cole- 
ridge was  one  of  his  attractions.  He  heard  some  of  the 
sage's  lectures  at  the  Royal  Institution,  and  regretted  that, 
from  Coleridge's  own  carelessness  in  preparation  and  the 
wretched  state  of  his  health,  they  were  so  nearly  a  break- 
down; he  saw  much  of  Coleridge  in  his  uncomfortable 
temporary  chambers  in  the  oflBce  of  the  Courier  newspa- 
per, in  the  Strand ;  and  in  his  calls  on  Coleridge  at  these 
chambers  he  met  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  Godwin,  and  other 
new  faces.  Later  in  the  year  he  is  found  still,  or  again, 
in  London,  in  lodgings  in  Titchfield  Street  and  Northum- 
berland Street,  Marylebone,  eating  his  terms,  one  has  to 
suppose,  and  seeing  Lamb  and  Hazlitt,  and  sauntering  at 
nights  among  the  markets,  and  not  failing  at  the  Opera 
for  many  nights  in  succession.  In  November  of  the  same 
year  he  paid  a  second  visit  to  Wordsworth  at  the  Lakes ; 
and  he  remained  there  till  February,  1809,  when  he  return- 
ed to  London.  Wordsworth,  at  the  time  of  this  second 
visit  of  De  Quincey,  had  been  busy  with  that  series  of  po- 
litical letters  in  the  Courier  newspaper  which  he  converted 
into  more  complete  form  in  his  pamphlet,  published  May, 
1809,  Concerning  the  Relations  of  Great  Britain,  Spain, 
and  Portugal,  as  affected  hy  the  Convention  of  Cintra.  It 
was  De  Quincey,  after  his  return  to  London,  who  saw  this 
pamphlet  through  the  press,  adding  an  appendix  of  notes, 
29 


44  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap.  iv. 

which  Wordsworth  described  as  "  done  in  a  masterly  man- 
ner." The  service  was  gratefully  acknowledged  also  by 
Wordsworth's  sister,  Dorothy.  A  letter  of  hers  is  extant 
in  which  she  thanks  De  Quincey  warmly  for  having  saved 
her  brother  so  much  anxiety,  says  he  had  been  a  treasure 
to  them  both,  and  hopes  that  he  may  soon  be  at  Grasmere 
to  refresh  himself  after  the  troubles  of  his  task. 

Dorothy  Wordsworth's  hope  in  this  letter  points  to  an 
arrangement  of  some  importance  that  had  been  come  to 
between  De  Quincey  and  the  Wordsworths.  This  was 
that  De  Quincey  should  leave  London,  Oxford,  and  all  his 
other  troublesome  entanglements  in  the  South,  and  should 
come  to  reside  permanently  at  the  Lakes,  as  the  tenant  of 
the  very  cottage  in  which  Wordsworth  had  lived  from 
1799  to  1807,  but  which  he  had  recently  quitted  for  the 
somewhat  larger  house,  called  Allan  BanK,  about  a  mile 
distant.  Through  the  latter  months  of  1809  the  talk 
among  the  inhabitants  of  the  quiet  valley  of  Grasmere  was 
of  the  young  gentleman  who  was  coming  to  live  among 
them  in  Mr.  Wordsworth's  old  cottage,  and  of  Miss  Words- 
worth's careful  activity  in  ordering  carpets  and  other  fur- 
nishings, and  getting  the  cottage  ready  for  his  arrival. 


CHAPTER  V. 

BACHELOR   LIFE    AT   TBE   LAKES. 
[1809-1816.] 

In  November,  1809,  De  Quincey,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
four,  took  possession  of  his  pretty  cottage  at  Townend, 
Grasmere,  and  became  one  of  the  so-called  LaMsts.  For 
seven-and-twenty  years  this  cottage  was  to  be  in  his  ten- 
ancy, and  for  more  than  twenty  of  these  it  was  to  be  his 
head-quarters  and  nominal  home,  the  place  where  he  re- 
sided constantly  when  he  was  at  rest,  or  to  which  he 
always  returned  from  any  of  his  frequent  divagations. 

Strange  that  a  district  of  England  which  had  been  sleep- 
ing unknown  in  its  native  beauties  and  grandeurs  from 
time  immemorial,  over  whose  mountains  the  snow  had 
come  and  gone  silently  for  a  thousand  winters,  and  whose 
valleys  had  laughed  again  in  equal  privacy  into  shower 
and  sunshine  through  the  thousand  alternating  summers, 
should  have  been  suddenly  evoked  into  celebrity  by  the 
genius  of  one  man.  But  so  it  had  happened.  Words- 
worth was  making  the  Lake  District,  and  the  call  had  gone 
forth  to  come  and  behold  it.  Ho !  all  ye  that  are  tourists 
and  in  quest  of  the  picturesque,  try  this  district  in  the 
proper  season ;  all  ye  that  have  made  a  little  money,  and 
desire  to  settle  somewhere,  in  peace  and  meditative  com- 
fort, for  the  rest  of  your  lives,  examine  these  valleys  and 
the  skirts  of  these  lakes  for  the  suitable  spots ;  all  ye  that 


«6  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

are  sons  of  the  muses  in  the  higher  sense,  not  tied  by  hard 
necessity  to  the  vicinity  of  a  printing-press  in  London,  or 
Edinburgh,  or  any  other  city,  but  at  liberty  to  select  an 
abode  where  you  may  possess  your  souls  in  quiet  and  com- 
bine high  thinking  with  plain  living — Mr.  Wordsworth 
uses  and  recommends  no  beverages  stronger  than  milk  or 
tea;  but  stronger  may  be  imported  if  indispensable,  and 
there  are  inns  on  the  roads — come  and  have  cottages  here, 
and  spend  hours  every  day  in  the  open  air,  communing 
with  Nature  herself,  as  she  is  to  be  found,  pure  and  unso- 
phisticated, in  Cumberland  and  Westmoreland  scenery ! 
By  the  year  1809  the  response  had  been  considerable. 
Tourists  had  been  becoming  numerous  enough  to  suggest 
to  Wordsworth  the  rudiments  of  what  afterwards  took 
form  as  his  Guide  to  the  Lakes;  new  residents  from  among 
the  class  of  retired  business  men  were  appearing  by  de- 
grees ;  and,  though  fewer  sons  of  the  muses  were  in  cir- 
cumstances to  accept  the  invitation  than  might  have  liked 
to  do  so,  a  sprinkling  of  such  was  to  be  counted. 

Wordsworth  himself,  now  in  his  fortieth  year,  and  set- 
tled at  Grasmere  since  1799,  had  just,  as  we  have  seen, 
migrated  from  his  previous  cottage  to  Allan  Bank,  only  a 
mile  distant,  which  was  to  be  his  residence  till  the  spring 
of  1811,  when  he  transferred  himself  to  Grasmere  Parson- 
age, there  to  remain  till  1813,  when  he  removed  to  his  final 
and  most  famous  residence  of  Rydal  Mount.  Southey, 
the  industrious  Southey,  four  years  younger  than  Words- 
worth, had  been  established  for  some  years  at  Greta  Hall, 
Keswick,  in  the  Cumberland  portion  of  the  Lake  District, 
and  at  least  thirteen  miles  from  Wordsworth.  It  was  a 
convenient  distance  between  two  men  whose  mutual  re- 
spect obliged  them  to  occasional  intercourse,  but  whose 
styles  of  genius  and  habits  of  literary  work  were  so  differ- 


v.]  BACHELOR  LIFE  AT  THE  LAKES.  4T 

ent  as  to  cause  some  degree  of  mutual  repulsion.  Coleridge, 
Southey's  brother-in-law,  who  had  been  a  Lakist  in  pre- 
vious years,  and  quartered  for  some  time,  with  his  family, 
in  Southey's  house,  had,  as  we  have  seen,  broken  away  from 
the  Lakes  for  a  while,  gone  abroad,  gone  to  Somersetshire, 
but  again  gravitated  to  the  mill-horse  round  of  London. 
Having  sent  his  wife  and  children  back  to  Southey's,  how- 
ever, he  had  at  length  followed  them  himself,  to  try  the 
Lakes  once  more ;  and,  from  late  in  1809  to  the  middle  of 
1810,  Coleridge  was  to  be  again  a  denizen  of  the  district, 
moving  between  Southey's  at  Keswick  and  Wordsworth's 
at  Grasmere,  but  on  the  whole  preferring  to  be  with  Words- 
worth. Here,  through  that  time,  he  was  to  be  engaged  in 
bringing  out  his  periodical  called  The  Friend,  which  was 
printed  at  Penrith,  and  the  bad  management  of  which  was 
to  bring  the  whole  concern  to  bankruptcy  in  the  twenty- 
ninth  number.  Three  other  literary  notabilities  of  the 
Lake  District,  at  the  time  of  De  Quincey's  advent  there, 
deserve  especial  mention.  One  was  Dr.  Richard  Watson, 
Bishop  of  Llandaff,  now  seventy -two  years  of  age,  but 
with  seven  years  of  life  still  before  him,  living  at  his  man- 
sion of  Calgarth  Park,  on  Windermere,  eight  miles  south 
from  Grasmere,  and  altogether  the  leading  personage  in 
the  society  of  the  region,  from  his  ecclesiastical  rank  and 
great  wealth,  his  hospitality  and  conversational  ability,  and 
the  recollection  of  his  extraordinary  series  of  publications. 
A  much  humbler  man,  but  loved  beyond  expression  by  all 
his  intimate  friends,  was  Charles  Lloyd,  living  at  Brathay, 
about  half-way  between  Calgarth  and  Grasmere,  originally 
a  Quaker,  but  now  a  kind  of  Lakist  Rousseau,  revealing 
philosophic  powers  that  had  not  been  guessed  from  his 
published  poems.  The  time  was  yet  some  years  distant 
when  this  fine  intellect,  overclouded  by  a  growing  lunacy, 


48  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

was  to  be  withdrawn  from  Brathay  to  die  abroad.  Finally, 
a  recent  comer  into  the  Lake  District,  proprietor  since 
1807  of  EUeray,  also  on  Windermere,  about  a  mile  from 
Calgarth,  was  a  young  Scoto-Oxonian  of  whom  the  world 
was  to  hear  more  than  of  either  Bishop  Watson  or  Charles 
Lloyd.  This  was  John  Wilson,  afterwards  known  as  Pro- 
fessor Wilson  and  "  Christopher  North."  He  was  almost 
exactly  of  De  Quincey's  own  age,  or  but  three  months 
older ;  but  what  a  contrast  between  them  physically ! — De 
Quincey  one  of  the  smallest  and  feeblest-looking  of  mor- 
tals, hardly  more  than  five  feet  high,  while  Wilson  was 
one  of  the  most  magnificent  young  athletes  that  ever  at- 
tracted men's  or  women's  eyes  in  street  or  on  heather. 
His  stature  close  on  six  feet,  his  frame  proportioned  into 
the  very  ideal  of  a  Hercules-Apollo  of  the  Scandinavian 
or  yellow-haired  type,  masking  immensity  of  strength  un- 
der the  litheness  of  a  leopard,  he  carried  also  one  of  the 
noblest  and  most  poetic  of  heads  ever  set  on  beautifully 
square  human  shoulders.  Then,  what  a  reputation  he  had 
brought  with  him  from  Oxford,  where,  strangely  enough, 
he  had  been  a  gentleman-commoner  of  Magdalen  College 
all  the  time  of  De  Quincey's  residence  in  the  University, 
though  they  had  never  then  met !  While  De  Quincey  had 
been  creeping  through  the  University,  a  bookish,  opium- 
eating  recluse,  Wilson  had  been  the  most  observed  man  of 
all  the  colleges,  not  more  for  his  magnificent  physique  and 
his  unapproachable  applications  of  it  in  pugilistic  matches, 
leaping  matches,  and  all  other  kinds  of  University  sports, 
than  for  his  universal  sociability,  exuberance  of  humour, 
easy  triumphs  in  the  classics  and  whatever  else  he  cared  to 
compete  in,  and  promises  of  some  unusual  form  of  literary 
effulgence  not  yet  distinctly  featured.  With  this  kind  of 
reputation  preceding  him  from  Oxford,  it  was  as  if  he  had 


v.]  BACHELOR  LIFE  AT  THE  LAKES.  49 

bounded  into  the  Lake  District,  rather  than  merely  settled 
in  it ;  and  already  the  splendid  young  Mr.  Wilson  of  El- 
leray,  to  whom  his  father,  a  Paisley  manufacturer,  had  left 
a  clear  fortune  of  50,000/.,  was  known  not  only  to  all  his 
neighbours  that  were  likely  to  think  of  that  matter,  but 
also  to  every  boatman,  every  innkeeper,  every  crack  wres- 
tler or  boxer,  every  band  of  gipsies  or  other  vagrants,  over 
the  whole  region. 

In  this  mere  enumeration  there  is  already  implied  a  good 
deal  of  De  Quincey's  life  through  the  six  or  seven  years  at 
present  under  notice.  The  mile  of  road  from  his  own  cot- 
tage to  Wordsworth's  house  of  Allan  Bank  was  his  famil- 
iar walk  morning  and  evening  from  the  first,  for  the  sake 
of  Wordsworth's  society,  and  also  of  Coleridge's,  so  long 
as  Coleridge,  busy  in  bringing  out  his  Friend,  remained 
Wordsworth's  guest.  As  many  as  five  hundred  books  at  a 
time  from  the  very  considerable  library  which  De  Quincey 
had  in  his  cottage,  a  large  portion  of  it  consisting  of  Ger- 
man books,  would,  he  tells  us,  be  in  Wordsworth's  house  in 
those  days  for  Coleridge's  use — Wordsworth's  own  library 
being  the  most  wretched  thing  that  ever  went  by  that 
name,  a  mere  litter  of  tattered  odd  volumes  on  a  few 
shelves.  The  distance  from  South  ey,  whose  library  was 
the  chief  distinction  of  his  house,  prevented  such  frequent 
intercourse  with  him  as  with  the  Wordsworths ;  nor  was 
De  Quincey  ever  bound  to  Southey  by  any  very  close  in- 
timacy. He  did  occasionally  visit  at  Greta  Hall,  however, 
and  was  able,  "  in  a  qualified  sense,"  to  call  Southey  his 
friend ;  and  we  find  Southey,  in  a  letter  to  a  correspondent 
in  1810,  making  mention  of  De  Quincey  in  rather  memo- 
rable terms.  "  De  Quincey,"  he  says,  "  is  a  singular  man, 
but  better  informed  than  any  person  almost  that  I  ever 
met  at  his  age."  That  De  Quincey  was  among  the  numer- 
3* 


BO  DE  QUmCET.  [cjhap. 

ous  visitors  of  the  great  Bishop  Watson  at  Calgarth  Park, 
and  thus  came  to  know  that  celebrity  personally,  is  no  mere 
guess.  "  This  dignitary,"  he  tells  us,  "  I  knew  myself  as 
much  as  I  wished  to  know  him :  he  was  interesting,  yet 
also  not  interesting ;"  and  he  goes  on  to  sketch  for  us  his 
portrait  of  the  somewhat  pompous  and  worldly,  yet  kindly, 
jovial,  candid,  and  strong  -  headed  septuagenarian,  whom, 
pluralist  and  sinecurist  though  he  had  been  all  liis  life,  and 
all  but  avowedly  at  his  own  table  a  Socinian  and  free- 
thinker, the  Whigs  had  wished  to  make  Archbishop  of 
York.  At  Brathay,  De  Quincey  was  a  constant  visitor, 
sometimes  in  solitary  conversation  for  hours  with  the  phil- 
osophic Charles  Lloyd  himself,  sometimes  at  one  of  Lloyd's 
well-attended  dinner  parties,  sometimes  looking  on  at  one 
of  those  evening  parties  of  young  people  that  Lloyd  liked 
to  see  gathered  at  his  house.  It  had  been  at  one  of  these 
evening  parties  at  Lloyd's,  apparently  in  the  year  1808, 
that  De  Quincey  had  first  seen  Wilson — dancing  radiantly 
and  indefatigably,  and  dhiefly  with  a  Miss  Jane  Penny, 
"  the  leading  belle  of  the  Lake  Country ;"  but  it  was  in 
Wordsworth's  house  that  the  first  formal  introduction  took 
place.  It  was  Wordsworth  himself,  when  De  Quincey  en- 
tered his  room  one  morning  and  found  a  stranger  with 
him,  that  pronounced  the  words  of  introduction,  "J/r.  Wil- 
son of  Elleray,^^  in  his  usual  deep  tones.  From  the  time 
of  this  introduction  the  two  were  fast  friends,  some  unusu- 
ally strong  elective  affinity  attaching  the  magnificent  mas- 
ter of  EUeray  to  his  puny  neighbour.  There  was  talk  be- 
tween them  of  a  tour  together  to  Spain,  the  Mediterranean, 
and  the  East ;  and,  though  that  came  to  nothing,  they  con- 
trived to  be  together  as  much  as  possible,  whenever  Wil- 
son was  at  EUeray,  and  not,  as  happened  pretty  often, 
Rway  in  Edinburgh  on  the  business  of  his  nominal  prepa- 


▼.]  BACHELOR  LIFE  AT  THE   LAKES.  61 

ration  for  the  Scottish  Bar.  It  must  have  been  a  sight  to 
see  the  two  together  in  one  of  Wilson's  fishing  expeditions 
among  the  Lakes,  or  in  their  joint  rambles  over  the  hills, 
the  little  De  Quincey  trudging  side  by  side  with  his  majes- 
tic comrade.  But  De  Quincey  was  a  capital  walker — never 
satisfied  without  his  ten  or  fifteen  miles  daily  in  the  open 
air.  Even  in  that  matter,  therefore,  he  and  Wilson  were 
well  enough  matched ;  while  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
in  the  subtle,  scholarly,  whimsical,  and  deeply  reasoned 
bits  of  brain-product  which  the  smaller  man  gave  to  the 
larger  in  the  course  of  their  walks,  in  exchange  for  the 
laughs  and  wild,  immethodic  chaunts  which  prophesied 
the  future  Christopher,  the  larger  man  may  not  have  had 
the  better  bargain.  When  Wilson  was  not  at  Elleray,  or 
even  when  he  was  there,  De  Quincey  delighted  much  in 
long,  aimless  walks  by  himself,  especially  nocturnal  walks. 
More  and  more,  it  seems,  after  1810,  when  Coleridge 
took  his  final  departure  from  the  Lakes,  there  had  been  a 
gradual  waning  of  the  friendship  between  De  Quincey  and 
Wordsworth.  They  were  still  much  together;  Words- 
worth still  consulted  De  Quincey  about  his  poems,  or  lines 
in  his  poems ;  and  De  Quincey's  admiration  of  the  hero 
in  his  poetic  character  remained  unabated.  But,  whether 
because  Wordsworth,  in  his  self -absorption,  found  De  Quin- 
cey's companionship  unnecessary,  or  because  De  Quincey 
felt  his  nerves  jarred  by  Wordsworth's  habitual  austerity 
and  masculine  hardness,  certain  it  is  that  there  came  at 
length  to  be  some  degree  of  mutual  alienation.  This  was 
recompensed  in  part  by  the  fidelity  of  Dorothy  Words- 
worth's liking  for  De  Quincey  and  by  the  growing  at- 
tachment to  him  of  Wordsworth's  children.  The  Words- 
worth children  were  never  tired  of  talking  of  "  Kinsey " 
and  the  presents  he  brought  them.     *'  Kinsey !  Kinsey ! 


52  DE  QUINCEY.  {CBJiP. 

what  a'  bring  Katy  from  London  ?"  were  the  parting  words 
of  one  of  them,  his  favourite  little  Kate  Wordsworth,  as  he 
was  going  away  for  a  while.  He  remembered  the  words, 
and  quoted  them  in  a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Dorothy 
Wordsworth  on  hearing  of  the  young  thing's  death  in  his 
absence,  June  4th,  1812.  His  grief  over  the  death  of  this 
child  passed  all  that  is  common  in  that  kind  of  experi- 
ence. 

Only  a  part  of  the  life  of  a  man,  even  at  the  Lakes,  can 
consist  in  walks  and  talks  out-of-doors  with  friends,  or  in 
visits  to  the  houses  of  neighbours.  Much  of  it,  all  the 
best  of  it,  must  consist  in  what  he  does  by  himself  within 
the  four  walls  that  enclose  him  when  he  is  not  dependent 
on  others.  Have  we  any  glimpse  of  De  Quincey  and  his 
occupations  in  his  solitary  bachelorhood  in  his  pretty  rose- 
embowered  cottage  at  Grasmere  ?  We  have ;  and  it  ought 
to  be  quoted.  It  is  the  passage  where,  overleaping  the  in- 
terval from  his  Oxford  life,  he  presents  himself  as  he  was 
in  1812,  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  away  from  Oxford, 
and  buried  among  mountains : 

"  And  what  am  I  doing  amongst  the  mountains  ?  Taking  opium. 
Yes;  but  what  else?  Why,  reader,  in  1812,  the  year  we  are  now 
arrived  at,  as  well  as  for  some  years  previous,  I  have  been  chiefly 
studying  German  metaphysics,  or  the  writings  of  Kant,  Fichte, 
Schelling,  &o.  And  how,  and  in  what  manner  do  I  live  ?  in  short, 
what  class  or  description  of  men  do  I  belong  to?  I  am  at  this 
period — viz.,  in  1812 — living  in  a  cottage;  and  with  a  single  female 
servant  {honi  soit  qui  mal  y  pense),  who,  amongst  my  neighbours, 
passes  by  the  name  of  my  '  house-keeper.'  And,  as  a  scholar  and  a 
man  of  learned  education,  I  may  presume  to  class  myself  as  an  un- 
worthy member  of  that  indefinite  body  called  gentlemen.  Partly  on 
the  ground  I  have  assigned — partly  because,  from  having  no  visible 
calling  or  business,  it  is  rightly  judged  that  I  must  be  living  on  my 
private  fortune — I  am  so  classed  by  my  neighbours ;  and,  by  the 


T.]  BACHELOR  LIFE  AT  THE  LAKES.  53 

courtesy  of  modern  England,  I  am  usually  addressed  on  letters,  Ac, 
Squire. . . .  Am  I  married  ?  Not  yet.  And  I  still  take  opium  ?  On 
Saturday  nights.  And,  perhaps,  have  taken  it  unblushingly  ever 
since  'the  rainy  Sunday,'  and  'the  stately  Pantheon,'  and  'the  be- 
atific druggist '  of  1804  ?  Even  so.  And  how  do  I  find  my  health 
after  all  this  opium-eating  ?  in  short,  how  do  I  do  ?  Why,  pretty 
well,  I  thank  you,  reader.  In  fact,  if  I  dared  to  say  the  real  and  sim- 
ple truth  (though,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  theories  of  some  medical 
men,  I  ought  to  be  ill),  I  was  never  better  in  my  life  than  in  the 
spring  of  1812 ;  and  I  hope  sincerely  that  the  quantity  of  claret, 
port,  or  *  London  particular  Madeira,'  which,  in  all  probability,  you, 
good  reader,  have  taken,  and  design  to  take,  for  every  term  of  eight 
years  during  your  natural  life,  may  as  little  disorder  your  health  as 
mine  was  disordered  by  all  the  opium  I  had  taken  (though  in  quan- 
tity such  that  I  might  well  have  bathed  and  swum  in  it)  for  the  eight 
years  between  1804  and  1812." 

Translated  into  stricter  biographical  language,  this 
means,  in  the  first  place,  that  De  Quincey  had  been  a 
hard  student  during  his  residence  at  the  Lakes,  burning 
the  midnight  oil  a  good  deal  over  his  books  of  all  sorts, 
but  especially  over  the  later  German  transcendentalists. 
Nothing  is  said  of  that  other  exercise  which  is  the  sole 
salvation  of  any  man  situated  as  De  Quincey  was,  and 
without  which  reading  and  reverie  are  but  an  Epicurean 
waste  of  spirit — Sictxial  production  of  some  kind  or  other, 
by  a  wide-awake  exertion  of  one's  own  faculties,  out  of 
the  stuff  of  one's  readings  and  reveries.  We  may,  how- 
ever, if  we  choose,  suppose  piles  of  papers  on  his  table,  if 
only  in  the  form  of  abstracts  of  the  books  read,  and  com- 
ments and  criticisms  on  them  for  his  own  edification.  Of 
this  we  are  less  certain  than  of  the  other  fact  of  which 
the  extract  assures  us.  He  had  brought  the  habit  of 
opium-taking  to  the  Lakes  with  him ;  and  an  indispensa- 
ble article  on  his  table,  on  one  night  of  the  week  at  least, 
when  he  was  seated  by  himself,  and  the  shutters  were 


64  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

shut,  and  the  candles  lit,  and  the  fire  burning  brightly, 
was  the  opium  decanter ! 

De  Quincey's  intimations  on  this  subject  are  perfectly 
plain.  Through  the  eight  years  preceding  1812  he  had, 
he  says,  persisted  uninterruptedly  in  the  use  of  opium, 
with  a  gradual  increase  both  in  the  frequency  of  his  doses 
and  of  the  quantity  of  each,  but  still — so  he  could  flatter 
himself — with  no  signs  of  permanent  injury.  But,  with- 
in a  year,  he  goes  on  to  say,  the  case  was  altered.  The 
year  1813,  he  intimates,  was  a  fatal  one  in  his  history. 
There  had  been  some  calamity  of  a  private  kind,  causing 
him  great  distress.  What  it  was  he  does  not  say  ;  but  it 
seems  to  have  been  some  serious  catastrophe  in  his  pecu- 
niary affairs.  This  may  be  inferred  from  a  letter  to  him 
from  his  uncle.  Colonel  Penson,  sent  from  Futtygur,  in 
India,  and  dated  16th  July,  1813.  *'  I  have  heard  that 
your  affairs  are  not  prosperous,"  the  letter  begins, 
"  though  of  the  nature  or  extent  of  your  misfortunes  I 
have  no  information.  Yet,  as  it  has  pleased  God  to  bless 
me  beyond  either  hope  or  expectation  since  I  left  Eng- 
land, I  feel  that  in  requesting  your  acceptance  of  the' 
enclosed  I  am  not  violating,"  <fec.  What  the  good  uncle 
enclosed  was  a  handsome  draft  for  his  nephew's  help.  It 
may  have  been  to  the  same  unfortunate  crisis  in  De  Quin- 
cey's affairs  that  there  had  been  reference  in  a  note  sent 
him  by  Wordsworth  some  months  before,  when  he  was 
away  on  one  of  his  rambles  from  Grasmere.  The  main 
purpose  was  to  inform  him  of  the  death  of  another  of 
Wordsworth's  children,  little  Tommy,  who  had  been  a  pet 
of  De  Quincey's ;  but  the  note  ends,  "  Most  tenderly  and 
lovingly,  with  heavy  sorrow  for  you,  my  dear  friend,  I 
remain  yours,  W.  Wordsworth."  Whether  the  calamity 
was  of  the  kind  here  suggested  or  not,  it  had  very  im- 


T.]  BACHELOR  LIFE  AT  THE  LAKES.  66 

portant  effects  on  De  Quincey's  health,  and,  through 
them,  on  his  dealings  with  opium.  "  I  was  attacked,"  he 
says,  "  by  a  most  appalling  irritation  of  the  stomach,  in 
all  respects  the  same  as  that  which  had  caused  me  so 
much  suffering  in  youth,  and  accompanied  by  a  revival 
of  the  old  dreams.  Now,  then,  it  was — viz.,  in  the  year 
1813 — that  I  became  a  regular  and  confirmed  (no  longer 
an  intermitting)  opium-eater."  He  explains  what  he 
means  by  informing  us  that  from  this  time  the  use  of  the 
drug  increased  and  increased  upon  him  till  it  reached  the 
monstrous  allowance  of  320  grains  of  solid  opium,  or  8000 
drops  of  laudanum,  per  day.  It  may  convey  a  more  ex- 
act idea  if  we  add  that  8000  drops  would  fill  about  seven 
ordinary  wine-glasses. 

That  this  exchange  of  the  practice  of  a  periodical  or 
intermittent  opium -debauch  for  the  character  of  a  con- 
firmed and  daily  opium-eater  was  accompanied  by  some 
speedy  experience  of  those  opium-horrors  of  which  he  has 
left  us  such  vivid  descriptions,  may  be  taken  for  granted. 
It  is  to  a  later  period,  however,  that  he  refers  his  full 
experience  of  those  opium-horrors;  and  what  we  should 
gather  from  his  brief  accounts  of  himself  for  the  year  or 
two  immediately  following  1813  is  rather  that  he  was  not 
yet  in  the  stage  of  that  most  awful  experience  of  the  ef- 
fects of  opium,  but  simply  under  an  increasing  cloud  of 
gloom,  with  a  torpor  of  the  intellectual  faculties.  The  re- 
corded incidents  of  those  years  are  very  few,  and  relate 
chiefly  to  some  rambles  away  from  the  Lakes.  Several 
times,  as  we  are  told,  he  was  in  London ;  and  every  year, 
it  appears,  he  was  for  some  time  in  Somersetshire  or  else- 
where in  the  West  of  England,  visiting  his  mother  and 
her  friends.  It  was  in  one  of  those  visits  to  Somerset- 
shire, in  1814,  and  at  Hannah  More's  house,  that  he  met 


66  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Mrs.  Siddons,  then  retiring  from  the  stage  in  her  fifty- 
ninth  year,  and  was  amused  by  an  animated  debate  which 
he  heard  between  the  two  ladies  on  the  points  of  Calvin- 
ism, till  Hannah  More's  lady-like  tact  changed  the  subject 
and  wiled  Mrs.  Siddons  into  her  charming  recollections  of 
Johnson  and  Garrick.  But  a  more  memorable  visit  than 
any  to  Somersetshire  was  that  which  he  paid  to  Edin- 
burgh, for  the  first  time,  in  the  winter  of  1814— '15. 

Wilson,  who  had  been  a  married  man  since  1811,  when 
the  fore  -  mentioned  Miss  Jane  Penny,  the  belle  of  the 
Lake  District,  became  his  wife,  had  been  coming  and  go- 
ing as  before  between  Edinburgh  and  EUeray.  He  had 
also  published  his  Isle  of  Palms  and  other  poems ;  he  was 
about  to  be  called  to  the  Edinburgh  Bar ;  and,  being  still 
in  the  enjoyment  of  his  large  patrimonial  fortune,  though 
very  soon  to  lose  it  by  the  misconduct  of  a  relative,  he 
was  now,  in  his  thirtieth  year,  a  shining  figure  in  Edin- 
burgh society.  Twice  or  thrice  he  had  tried  to  bring  De 
Quincey  with  him  from  the  Lakes ;  but  not  till  now  had 
he  succeeded.  The  months  of  the  winter  of  1814-15 
which  De  Quincey  did  spend  in  Edinburgh  were  a  sub- 
ject of  brilliant  recollection  long  afterwards.  Of  Scott 
and  Jeffrey  he  seems  to  have  seen  nothing,  or  nothing 
more  than  their  physiognomies  in  the  streets  or  the  Par- 
liament House;  but  the  group  of  less-known  but  rising 
men  that  was  gathered  round  Wilson  and  his  brothers, 
forming  the  Young  Edinburgh  of  that  date,  was  suflBcient- 
ly  interesting  in  itself.  There  was  Sir  William  Hamilton, 
in  his  twenty-seventh  year,  already  nominally  a  Scottish 
advocate,  but  really  an  omnivorous  scholar,  and,  as  the 
world  came  in  time  to  know,  the  nearest  approach  to  an 
Aristotle  redivivus  in  the  British  Logic  and  Metaphysics 
of  his  generation.      There  was  Sir  William's   younger 


v.]  BACHELOR  LIFE  AT  THE  LAKES.  57 

brother,  Thomas  Hamilton,  known  afterwards  as  the  author 
of  Cyril  Thornton,  a  novel  of  considerable  merit.  There 
was  Scott's  friend,  William  Allan,  the  painter,  afterwards 
Sir  William  Allan,  and  President  of  the  Royal  Scottish 
Academy.  There  was  a  certain  Robert  Pierce  Gillies,  of 
the  Scottish  Bar,  more  of  an  invalid  than  the  rest  of  the 
group,  but  versatile  in  literature,  full  of  literary  gossip, 
and  noted  in  those  days  for  the  "  all  but  princely  "  style 
of  his  hospitalities.  Finally,  not  to  mention  others  then 
walking  the  Parliament  House  as  budding  barristers,  af- 
terwards to  be  judges  or  big -wigs  of  some  kind,  there 
was  John  Gibson  Lockhart,  yet  only  in  his  twenty -first 
year,  and  not  to  be  called  to  the  Bar  till  two  years  hence, 
but  already  beginning  to  be  recognised  on  the  verge  of 
the  Young  Edinburgh  set  for  his  literary  promise  and  his 
scorpion  readiness  in  sting  and  caricature.  In  the  circle 
of  these,  with  Wilson's  house  as  the  centre,  De  Quincey 
moved  during  his  stay  in  Edinburgh,  welcome  among 
them  from  the  first,  and  leaving  among  them  no  ordinary 
impression.  Mr.  R.  P,  Gillies  has  commemorated  particu- 
larly the  effects  of  his  conversation.  "  The  talk  might  be 
of  'beeves,'  and  he  could  grapple  with  them,  if  expected 
to  do  so ;  but  his  musical  cadences  were  not  in  keeping 
with  such  work,  and  in  a  few  minutes  (not  without  some 
strictly  logical  sequence)  he  would  escape  at  will  from 
beeves  to  butterflies,  and  thence  to  the  soul's  immortal- 
ity, to  Plato,  and  Kant,  and  Schelling,  and  Fichte,  to  Mil- 
ton's early  years  and  Shakspeare's  Sonnets,  to  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge,  to  Homer  and  JEschylus,  to  St.  Thomas 
of  Aquin,  St.  Basil,  and  St.  Chrysostom."  As  yet,  it  is  to 
be  remembered,  De  Quincey  had  not  published  a  line  of 
his  own. 

For  incidents  in  De  Quincey's  bachelor  life  at  the  Lakea 
E 


68  DE  QUINCET.  [cHAP.r. 

after  his  retarn  from  Edinburgh  we  search  in  vain,  unless 
we  may  count  among  them  his  famous,  but  undated,  ad- 
venture with  the  Malay.  He  was  sitting  in  his  room  in 
his  cottage  one  day  when  he  was  informed  that  there  was 
a  strange,  dark  man  in  the  kitchen.  Going  to  the  rescue 
of  the  alarmed  girl  who  had  admitted  the  man,  he  found 
him  to  be  a  poor  Malay  tramp,  in  a  turban  and  dingy 
white  trousers,  whom  some  accident  had  brought  into 
those  parts.  He  had  some  food  and  rest,  and,  at  his  de- 
parture, De  Quincey,  who  could  not  understand  a  word 
he  said,  but  guessed  that  as  an  Asiatic  he  might  be  no 
stranger  to  opium,  presented  him  with  some.  The  Malay, 
after  looking  at  the  piece  given  him,  "enough  to  kill 
some  half-dozen  dragoons  together  with  their  horses," 
immediately  bolted  the  whole  at  one  mouthful.  De  Quin- 
cey felt  anxious  for  some  days ;  but,  as  he  never  heard  that 
a  dead  Malay  had  been  found  on  the  roads  thereabouts, 
he  became  satisfied  that  no  harm  had  been  done. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

MARRIBD    LIFE    AT   THE   LAKES. — PROSTRATION   UNDBR 
OPIUM. PROVINCIAL    EDITORSHIP. 

[1816-1821.] 

We  have  had  a  picture  from  De  Quincey  himself  of  his 
life  in  his  cottage  at  Grasmere  in  the  year  1812.  Here  is 
a  companion  picture,  also  by  himself,  of  his  life  in  the 
same  cottage  in  1816-'1'7 : 

"  Let  there  be  a  cottage,  standing  in  a  valley,  eighteen  miles  from 
any  town ;  no  spacious  valley,  but  about  two  miles  long  by  three- 
quarters  of  a  mile  in  average  width — the  benefit  of  which  provision 
is  that  all  families  resident  within  its  circuit  will  comprise,  as  it  were, 
one  larger  household,  personally  familiar  to  your  eye,  and  more  or 
less  interesting  to  your  affections.  Let  the  mountains  be  real  moun- 
tains, between  3000  and  4000  feet  high,  and  the  cottage  a  real  cot- 
tage, not  (as  a  witty  author  has  it)  '  a  cottage  with  a  double  coach- 
house ;'  let  it  be,  in  fact  (for  I  must  abide  by  the  actual  scene),  a 
white  cottage,  embowered  with  flowering  shrrbs,  so  chosen  as  to  un- 
fold a  succession  of  flowers  upon  the  walls,  and  clustering  around 
the  windows,  through  all  the  months  of  spring,  summer,  and  autumn, 
beginning,  in.  fact,  with  May  roses,  and  ending  with  jasmine.  Let 
it,  however,  not  be  spring,  nor  summer,  nor  autumn,  but  winter  in  its 
sternest  shape.  .  .  .  But  here,  to  save  myself  the  trouble  of  too  much 
verbal  description,  I  will  introduce  a  painter,  and  give  nim  directions 
for  the  rest  of  the  picture.  Painters  do  not  like  white  cottages,  un- 
less a  good  deal  weather-stained ;  but,  as  the  reader  now  understands 
that  it  is  a  winter  night,  his  services  will  not  be  required  except  for 
the  inside  of  the  house. — ^Paint  me,  then,  a  room  seventeen  feet  by 
30 


60  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

twelve,  and  not  more  than  seven  and  a  half  feet  high.  This,  reader, 
is  somewhat  ambitiously  styled,  in  my  family,  the  drawing-room ; 
but,  being  contrived  '  a  double  debt  to  pay,'  it  is  also,  and  more  just- 
ly, termed  the  library,  for  it  happens  that  books  are  the  only  article 
of  property  in  which  I  am  richer  than  my  neighbours.  Of  these 
I  have  about  5000,  collected  gradually  since  my  eighteenth  year. 
Therefore,  painter,  put  as  many  as  you  can  into  this  room.  Make  it 
populous  with  books ;  and,  furthermore,  paint  me  a  good  fire,  and 
furniture  plain  and  modest,  befitting  the  unpretending  cottage  of  a 
scholar.  And  near  the  fire  paint  me  a  tea-table ;  and  (as  it  is  clear 
that  no  creature  can  come  to  see  me  on  such  a  stormy  night)  place 
only  two  cups  and  saucers  on  the  tea-tray ;  and,  if  you  know  how  to 
paint  such  a  thing,  symbolically  or  otherwise,  paint  me  an  eternal 
teapot — eternal  a  joarie  ante  ami  a  parte  post ;  for  I  usually  drink  tea 
from  eight  o'clock  at  night  to  four  in  the  morning.  And,  as  it  is 
very  unpleasant  to  make  tea,  or  to  pour  it  out,  for  one's  self,  paint 
me  a  lovely  young  woman  sitting  at  the  table.     Paint  her  arms  like 

Aurora's,  and  her  smiles  like  Hebe's  ;  but  no,  dear  M !  not  even 

in  jest  let  me  insinuate  that  thy  power  to  illuminate  my  cottage  rests 
upon  a  tenure  so  perishable  as  mere  personal  beauty,  or  that  the 
witchcraft  of  angelic  smiles  lies  within  the  empire  of  any  earthly 
pencil.  Pass,  then,  my  good  painter,  to  something  more  within  its 
power;  and  the  next  article  brought  forward  should  naturally  be 
myself — a  picture  of  the  Opium-eater,  with  his  '  little  golden  recep- 
tacle of  the  pernicious  drug '  lying  beside  him  on  the  table.  As  to 
the  opium,  I  have  no  objection  to  see  a  picture  of  that;  you  may 
paint  it,  if  you  choose ;  but  I  apprise  you  that  no  '  little '  receptacle 
would,  even  in  1816,  answer  my  purpose,  who  was  at  a  distance  from 
the  '  stately  Pantheon '  and  all  druggists  (mortal  or  otherwise).  No : 
you  may  as  well  paint  the  real  receptacle,  which  was  not  of  gold,  but 
of  glass,  and  as  much  like  a  sublunary  wine-decanter  as  possible.  In 
fact,  one  day,  by  a  series  of  happily  conceived  experiments,  I  discov- 
ered that  it  was  a  decanter.  Into  this  you  may  put  a  quart  of  ruby- 
coloured  laudanum ;  that,  and  a  book  of  German  metaphysics  placed 
by  its  side,  will  sufficiently  attest  my  being  in  the  neighbourhood." 

The    fair    tea-mater    of    this    passage,   styled   "  dear 

M ,"  was   De  Quincey's  wife,  whom  he   married   in 

the  end  of  1816.     She  was  a  Margaret  Simpson,  daughter 


VI.]  MARRIED  LIFE  AT  THE  LAKES.  61 

of  a  small  Westmoreland  farmer,  living  at  a  place  called 
"The  Nab,"  near  De  Quincey's  cottage,  and  sometimes 
confounded  now  with  that  cottage  by  tourists,  the  rather 
because  De  Quincey  alternated  a  good  deal  between  the 
two  after  his  marriage.  At  the  date  of  the  marriage  the 
bride  was  eighteen  years  of  age,  De  Quincey  being  thirty- 
one.  For  a  while  before  the  event,  and  in  anticipation  of 
it,  De  Quincey  had,  as  he  tells  us,  "  suddenly  and  without 
any  considerable  effort,"  reduced  his  daily  allowance  of 
opium  from  320  grains,  or  8000  drops,  to  40  grains,  or 
1000  drops.  The  effect  had  been  magical.  The  "cloud 
of  profoundest  melancholy"  which  had  rested  on  his 
brain  passed  away ;  his  mind  could  think  as  healthily  as 
ever  before ;  he  could  read  Kant  again,  or  any  other  hard 
writer,  with  clear  intelligence.  And  so  for  a  while  after 
the  marriage,  till  he  could  count  about  a  year  altogether 
of  parenthetic  peace  and  happiness  in  this  portion  of  his 
life.  "  It  was  a  year  of  brilliant  water  (to  speak  after 
the  manner  of  jewellers),  set,  as  it  were,  and  insulated,  in 
the  gloomy  umbrage  of  opium."  For,  as  he  goes  on  to 
inform  us,  his  restriction  of  himself  to  the  diminished 
allowance  was  but  temporary;  and  from  some  time  in 
1817^  on  through  1818,  and  even  into  1819,  he  was  again 
under  the  full  dominion  of  the  fell  agent,  rising  once 
more  to  his  8000  drops  per  diem,  or  even  sometimes  to 
12,000  drops.  This,  accordingly,  was  the  time  of  that 
most  intimate  and  tremendous  experience  of  the  opium- 
horrors  in  his  own  case  which  he  has  described  in  part  of 
his  Confessions. 

His  description  fully  bears  out  the  accepted  belief, 
confirmed  so  strikingly  by  the  similar  case  of  Coleridge, 
that  one  inevitable  effect  of  opium-eating  is  paralysis  of 
the  will.     With  his  intellectual  apprehensions  of  duty  as 


62  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

keen  as  ever,  he  could  propose  or  execute  nothing ;  he 
was  as  powerless  as  an  infant  for  any  practical  effort. 
Everything  was  neglected  or  procrastinated ;  the  domestic 
economy,  so  far  as  it  depended  on  himself,  might  have 
gone  to  wreck ;  letters,  however  urgent,  lay  about  unan- 
swered. Further,  there  was  a  paralysis  of  that  very  physi- 
cal craving  which,  if  gratified,  might  have  furnished  so 
far  a  counteractive  to  the  opium.  While  he  had  always 
before  needed  and  liked  long  walks,  and  while  his  sole 
chance  now  lay  in  enormous  exercise  of  that  kind,  he 
sank  into  a  state  of  hopeless  sedentariness.  Add  to  all 
this  the  protracted,  ever-varying,  never-ceasing  nightmare 
of  his  opium-dreams.  On  this  subject  he^ias  left  us  many 
pages,  blending  records  of  his  own  dreams  with  such  a 
science  or  philosophy  of  opium-dreaming  in  general  as 
perhaps  no  other  man  ever  attempted.  Biographically, 
the  following  is  the  substance :  That  faculty  of  day- 
dreaming, of  projecting  optical  images  or  fancies  out  of 
one's  own  mind  into  the  air,  which  is  constitutionally 
strong  in  some,  and  which  had  been  unusually  strong  in 
De  Quincey  from  his  infancy,  was  now  intensified  by  his 
opium-eating  into  an  ungovernable  propensity.  Espe- 
cially at  night,  as  he  lay  awake  in  bed,  his  thoughts  trans- 
lated themselves  into  visions  which  could  not  be  dis- 
missed, or  visions  would  come  of  themselves,  in  the  form 
of  "vast  processions"  and  "friezes  of  never-ending 
stories"  painted  on  the  darkness.  This  morbid  activity 
of  the  faculty  of  visual  creation  pursued  him  into  sleep. 
It  seemed  as  if  a  theatre  were  "  suddenly  opened  and 
lighted  up  "  within  his  brain,  for  the  performance,  regu- 
larly as  sleep  came,  of  nightly  extravaganzas  and  phan- 
tasmagories.  What  had  troubled  the  phantasy  already 
by  day  would  re-appear  in  the  night  with  wonderful  trans- 


VI.]  PROSTRATION  UNDER  OPIUM.  68 

mutations  and  expansions,  or  any  subject  that  had  been 
thought  of  by  day  would  present  itself  at  night  in  amaz- 
ing dream-scenery  and  allegory.  But,  on  the  whole,  the 
resources  of  material  for  the  repeated  nightly  pageant 
seemed  boundless.  What  should  come,  or  whence  it 
came,  was  incalculable.  It  was  as  if  among  the  specific 
potencies  of  opium  was  that  of  searching  out  whatever 
was  stored  up  and  dormant  anyhow  in  the  most  secret 
intricacies  of  the  nervous  organism,  unlocking  all  doors, 
compelling  all  the  hoarded  photographic  impressions  of 
all  that  had  happened  in  the  life  of  a  human  being  from 
the  hour  of  birth  to  yesterday,  all  that  had  gone  into  ob- 
livion with  himself  and  was  known  to  God  only,  to  flash 
out  again,  and  become  real  and  significant  once  more  in 
the  dreamy  revel.  But  it  was  also  as  if,  with  all  this  re- 
covery of  the  forgotten  actual,  the  bounds  of  ordinary 
sense-experience  were  burst,  and  the  world  of  the  dreams 
was  not  the  human  world,  but  some  other,  infernal  or 
supernal.  The  sense  of  space,  and  latterly  the  sense 
of  time,  were  strangely  affected.  One  moved,  or  hung, 
or  sank,  in  measureless  chasms,  unshored  astronomical 
abysses,  or  depths  without  a  star ;  minutes  shot  out  into 
years,  or  centuries  were  shrivelled  into  minutes.  When 
the  dream-scenery  was  most  earthly,  there  was  never  any 
comfort  in  it,  but  always  a  sense  of  misery,  dread,  strug- 
gle and  battle,  eternal  pursuit  of  something,  or  eternal 
flight  from  some  unescapable  enemy.  He  gives  speci- 
mens of  some  of  the  dreams  that  were  most  frequent  or 
most  hideous.  Sometimes,  in  some  recollection  of  the 
Malay,  the  dream-imagery  was  Oriental,  Egypt  adding  her 
horrors  to  those  of  China  and  Hindostan,  and  all  three 
yielding  a  monstrous  jumble  of  things  animate  and  inani- 
mate, amid  which  he  was  compelled  to  move  and  suffer, 


64  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

seeking  refuge  in  vain  in  pagodas  and  their  most  secret 
rooms,  or  chased  for  ages  through  tropical  forests,  or 
buried  in  caves  with  mummies  and  sphinxes  and  all  the 
abominations  of  the  ibis  and  crocodile.  At  other  times, 
though  the  dream-scenery  at  first  might  be  Oriental  or 
Alpine,  or  of  grave-yards  in  some  quiet  valley,  it  would 
turn  at  last  into  multitudinous  and  lamp-lit  London,  with 
its  mazes  and  labyrinths  of  streets,  and  through  those 
mazes  and  labyrinths  he  would  himself  be  wandering 
round  and  round,  amid  legions  of  ruflSanly  faces,  groping 
in  vain  for  the  lost  Ann  of  Oxford  Street. 

To  wake  day  after  day  at  noon  from  such  night-mare 
miseries,  and  be  aware  of  his  wife  and  children  standing 
by  him,  and  to  know  that,  when  the  day  waned,  it  would 
only  be  to  plunge  him  again  into  the  hideous  tumult  of 
his  other  or  opium-generated  existence,  became  an  agony 
unsufferable.  He  shrank  from  the  approach  of  sleep,  and 
longed  to  sleep  no  more.  His  condition  in  his  waking 
hours  was  that  of  a  "  suicidal  despondency ;"  there  seemed 
no  exit  from  his  wretchedness  but  suicide  or  lunacy.  At 
last,  however — just  when  the  reader  is  tired  of  the 
monotony  of  so  much  misery,  and  pity  is  passing  into 
something  like  disgust,  especially  in  recollection  of  the 
young  wife  and  mother  who  had  to  be  the  nurse  of  her 
opium-besotted  husband,  and  indeed  when  one  has  been 
taking  refuge  from  the  necessity  of  such  disgust  in  the 
fancy  that  matters  were  not  so  bad  as  they  are  described, 
and  that  some  of  the  more  hideous  opium-dreams  were 
subsequent  constructions  of  literary  genius,  in  which  fic- 
tion was  piled  upon  remembered  fact — just  at  this  point 
one  is  able  to  leave  the  ugly  sea  of  storm  and  confusion, 
and  to  set  foot  on  a  landing-place.  This  we  do  in  the 
year  1819.     There  had,  indeed,  been  a  gleam  of  returning 


Ti.]  PROSTRATION  UNDER  OPIUM.  66 

hope  in  the  previous  year.  In  the  very  thickest  depth  of 
De  Quincey's  mental  obscuration,  when  he  could  attend  to 
nothing,  and  had  abandoned  a  certain  great  philosophical 
work,  De  Emendatione  Humani  Intellectus,  which  he  had 
projected  in  imitation  of  Spinoza,  he  had  been  roused 
by  the  receipt,  from  a  friend  in  Edinburgh,  of  a  copy  of 
Ricardo's  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  then  recently 
published.  The  book  fascinated  him ;  he  could  read  and 
enjoy  it;  he  admired  the  author  prodigiously;  Ricardo 
seemed  to  him  the  first  man  who  had  shot  light  and  order 
into  what  had  hitherto  been  but  a  "  dark  chaos  of  mate- 
rials." He  was  moved  even  to  write,  or  to  dictate  to  his 
wife,  thoughts  that  grew  out  of  his  reading.  There  had 
thus  grown  in  his  hands  the  manuscript  of  a  book  or 
pamphlet  entitled  Prolegomena  to  all  Future  Systems  of 
Political  Economy.  The  book  had  been  actually  adver- 
tised, and  arrangements  made  for  printing  it,  when  the 
opium-torpor  again  fell  upon  him  and  the  manuscript  was 
left  incomplete.  Now,  however,  in  1819,  he  shook  himself 
free  with  more  effect.  The  circumstances  are  left  shad- 
owy ;  and  it  does  not  seem  that  it  was  then,  or  till  a  while 
later,  that  he  achieved  what  he  calls  his  "  triumph,"  or  re- 
lease for  a  good  while  together  from  his  thraldom  to 
opium.  Enough  is  told,  however,  to  show  that,  notwith- 
standing all  the  exertions  of  his  gentle  wife,  the  res  an- 
gusta  domi  had  become  so  severe  in  the  cottage  at  Gras- 
mere  that  even  the  opium-torpor  had  to  relax  its  hold  and 
permit  the  master  of  the  household  to  rise  and  look  about 
him.  By  some  immense  effort  De  Quincey  had  moderated 
his  dependence  on  the  drug,  and  was  looking  about  him 
in  something  like  restored  capacity  for  work,  when — Oh, 
bathos  from  the  projected  De  Emendatione  Humani  In- 
tellectus and  the  Prolegomena  to  all  Future  Systems  of 
4 


86  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Political  Economy! — he  was  caught  by  the  Westmoreland 
Tories  and  converted  into  the  editor  of  their  local  news- 
paper. 

The  Westmoreland  Gazette  had  been  started  in  1818, 
during  the  general  election  of  that  year,  when  Mr.  Brough- 
am had  the  first  of  his  three  unsuccessful  contests  for  the 
great  northern  county.  It  was  started  at  Kendal,  on  funds 
raised  by  gentlemen  who  were  "friends  to  the  Constitu- 
tion," to  oppose  the  "  infamous  levelling  doctrines  "  of  Mr. 
Brougham  and  of  the  local  Whig  organ  called  the  Kendal 
Chronicle.  An  editor  had  been  procured  from  London, 
but  had  turned  out  a  failure;  and  about  the  middle  of 
1819  the  editorship  was  oflEered  to  De  Quincey.  They 
had  offered  him  a  salary  of  160/.  a  year;  but,  as  this  was 
to  be  for  the  performance  of  all  the  duties,  and  as  that  in- 
volved residence  in  Kendal,  De  Quincey  preferred  an  ar- 
rangement by  which  he  was  to  pay  a  sub-editor  to  do  the 
drudgery  at  Kendal,  keeping  the  surplus  for  himself  for 
his  leading  articles  and  supervising  editorship  from  Gras- 
mere.  The  sub-editor  whom  he  engaged  would  not  take 
less  than  two  guineas  a  week,  leaving  but  50Z.  16*.  for  his 
chief;  but  the  proprietors  handsomely  made  up  this  sum 
to  54/.  12*.,  or  a  complete  guinea  a  week.  Of  all  this  De 
Quincey  sent  a  detailed  account,  in  very  hopeful  terms,  to 
his  uncle  in  India,  informing  the  colonel  at  the  same  time 
that  he  had  engagements  with  Blackwood's  Magazine  and 
the  Quarterly  Review,  which  would  bring  him  180/.  a  year 
more,  and  concluding  with  a  request  to  be  allowed  to  draw 
upon  the  colonel  for  500/.,  "  say  1 50/.  now,  and  the  other 
350/.  in  six  or  eight  months  hence."  This  would  re-estab- 
lish him  for  life,  he  said,  and  he  looked  forward  to  a  re- 
moval to  London,  to  resume  his  training  for  the  profession 
of  the  law. 


Yi.]  PROVINCIAL  EDITORSHIP.  61 

The  specimens  given  by  Mr.  Page,  from  the  files  of  the 
Westmoreland  Gazette,  of  De  Quincey's  leading  articles 
and  notices  to  correspondents  during  his  time  of  editor- 
ship, confirm  Mr.  Page's  general  conclusion  that  he  "  was 
not  born  for  a  successful  newspaper  editor."  Perhaps  the 
most  characteristic  of  the  quoted  specimens  is  an  article 
in  which,  in  answer  to  remonstrances  that  he  was  flying 
over  the  heads  of  his  readers,  he  expounds  his  ideas  of 
provincial  editorship  in  general  and  of  the  prospects  of 
the  Westmoreland  Gazette  in  particular.  "The  editor," 
he  says,  "can  assure  his  readers  that  his  own  personal 
friends  in  most  of  the  Universities,  especially  in  the  three 
weightiest — Oxford,  Cambridge,  and  Edinburgh — are  quite 
competent  in  number  and  power  to  float  the  Gazette  tri- 
umphantly into  every  section  and  division  of  those  learned 
bodies."  Nor  was  this  all.  While  not  neglecting  the  de- 
mands of  his  humbler  constituents  of  Westmoreland,  he 
could  not  forget  that  well-educated  and  learned  readers 
were  numerous  in  the  county.  For  their  sakes  he  is  proud 
to  intimate  that  he  "has  received  assurances  of  support 
from  two  of  the  most  illustrious  men  in  point  of  intellect- 
ual pretensions  that  have  appeared  for  some  ages " — 
whether  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  or  Wordsworth  and 
Southey,  is  not  quite  obvious.  But  even  this  is  not  all. 
"The  editor  will  go  a  step  further.  He  will  venture  to 
aflSrm  that,  even  without  the  powerful  aid  here  noticed  (to 
which  he  might  have  added  a  promise  of  co-operation 
from  London,  the  four  great  commercial  towns  of  the  sec- 
ond class,  many  of  the  third  class,  and  so  downwards,  as 
also  occasionally  from  Paris  and  Vienna,  from  Canada, 
and  from  Hindostan,  &c.)  —  even  without  the  powerful 
aid  here  noticed,  he  could  singly  and  unsupported  secure 
to  the   Gazette  one  feature  of  originality  which  would 


68  DE  QUINCET.  [chap. 

draw  upon  it  a  general  notice  throughout  Great  Britain." 
Was  not  German  Literature  a  yet  unworked  mine  of 
wealth,  an  absolute  Potosi ;  and  might  not  the  editor  say 
without  vanity,  since  his  part  would  be  only  that  of  select- 
ing and  translating,  that  no  journal  in  the  kingdom  could 
draw  on  this  mine  so  easily,  or  exhibit  such  nuggets  from 
it  weekly,  as  the  Westmoreland  Gazette  ?  All  this  for  a 
guinea  a  week  to  the  editor  at  Grasmere,  with  two  guineas 
a  week  for  the  grimy  cormorant  drudging  for  him  in  some 
public -house  at  Kendal!  There  is  something  like  evi- 
dence, however,  that  the  cormorant  was  dismissed,  and 
that  De  Quincey  took  up  his  quarters  for  some  time  at 
Kendal,  uniting  the  functions  of  editor  and  sub -editor, 
and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  their  salaries.  There  is  one  letter 
from  him  to  his  wife,  at  all  events,  dated  "  Commercial 
Inn,  11  o'clock  on  Thursday  night,"  which  presents  him 
as  then  in  Kendal  by  himself,  before  a  table  covered  with 
printer's  proofs,  and  very  heavy-hearted  at  being  away 
from  Grasmere.  He  has  been  vexed  particularly  by  news 
of  the  illness  of  his  little  child  Margaret.  "  God  bless  her, 
poor  little  lamb !"  he  ejaculates  affectionately,  adding  that, 
if  his  wife  cannot  come  to  Kendal  to-morrow,  he  will  try 
to  be  at  Grasmere  next  week. 

After  all,  De  Quincey  seems  to  have  done  not  badly  in 
his  editorship,  even  by  the  standard  of  the  Tory  gentlemen 
of  Westmoreland.  If  the  local  circulation  was  not  large,  the 
matter  administered  was  probably  more  acceptable  to  the 
country  folks  than  that  of  Coleridge's  Friend.  One  thing 
the  editorship  had  done  for  De  Quincey  himself.  It  had 
given  him  a  liking  for  the  sight  of  printer's  proofs.  Ac- 
cordingly, his  editorship  of  the  Westmoreland  Gazette  hav- 
ing come  to  an  end  some  time  in  1820,  or  been  converted, 
by  understanding  with  the  proprietors,  into  a  mere  con- 


VI.]  PROVINCIAL  EDITORSHIP.  69 

tributorship  thenceforward,  he  was  on  the  outlook  for 
other  literary  employment.  Not  unnaturally  his  thoughts 
turned  first  to  Edinburgh,  where  his  friend  Wilson,  now 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy,  had  since  1817  been  the 
lord  of  Blackwoocfs  Magazine,  and  he  and  Lockhart  and  a 
band  of  daring  young  Tories  about  them  had  made  that 
magazine  at  once  a  terror  and  a  new  splendour  in  the 
island,  and  where  there  was  no  lack  of  other  literary  pos- 
sibilities and  openings.  The  engagement  on  Blackwood 
mentioned  by  De  Quincey  to  his  uncle  in  1819  had,  it 
would  appear,  turned  out  a  quasi-engagement  only;  and 
in  the  end  of  1820  he  is  found  in  Edinburgh  in  person, 
examining  chances  on  the  spot.  In  a  letter  to  his  wife 
thence,  dated  December  9, 1820,  he  speaks  of  the  cordial 
reception  he  has  had  among  his  old  Edinburgh  friends. 
Nothing  definite,  however,  seems  to  have  come  of  the  visit. 
Wilson,  one  cannot  doubt,  did  his  best ;  but  there  may 
have  been  difficulties.  And  so,  not  yet  an  actual  contrib- 
utor to  Blackwood,  but  only  a  potential  contributor,  De 
Quincey  was  back  at  his  home  in  the  Lakes  early  in  1821. 
It  was  in  London,  and  not  in  Edinburgh,  that  he  was  first 
to  appear  as  a  writer  in  magazines. 


CHAPTER  Vn. 

PARTLY     IN     LONDON,   PARTLY    AT    THE     LAKES,   PARTLY    IN 

EDINBURGH. THE  "  CONFESSIONS  "  AND  OTHER  ARTICLES 

IN    THE    "LONDON    MAGAZINE,"    AND    FIRST    ARTICLES    IN 
"  BLACKWOOD." 

[1821-1830.] 

Th«  metropolitan  magazine  of  chief  note  in  those  days 
was  the  London  Magazine.  It  had  been  established  in 
January,  1820,  with  Messrs.  Baldwin,  Cradock,  <k  Co.  for 
the  publishers,  and  the  Aberdonian  Mr.  John  Scott  for  edi- 
tor; but,  in  July,  1821,  after  the  death  of  Scott  in  his  un- 
fortunate duel,  it  passed  into  the  hands  of  Messrs.  Taylor 
&  Hessey,  who  were  thenceforward  themselves  the  edi- 
tors. And  very  good  editors  they  were.  Aiming  high, 
and  having  retained  the  best  of  the  contributors  in  Scott's 
time  and  added  others,  they  had  already,  in  1821,  a  suflS- 
ciently  remarkable  staff  about  them,  whom  they  kept  in 
good-humour  and  a  kind  of  stimulated  unity  of  endeavour, 
not  only  by  what  was  then  considered  liberal  pay,  but  also 
by  an  excellent  monthly  dinner,  for  talk  and  wit-combat, 
at  the  expense  of  the  firm.  Keats,  who  had  contributed 
verses  to  the  earlier  numbers,  had  died  in  February,  1821 ; 
but  Charles  Lamb,  at  the  age  of  forty-six,  and  under  his 
newly-adopted  signature  of  "Elia,"  was  obliging  Messrs. 
Taylor  &  Hessey  and  the  world  with  fresh  specimens 
of  his  charming  essays.     Among  the  other  contributors 


CHAP.TH.]  THE  "LONDON  MAGAZINE."  71 

were,  or  were  to  be,  Hazlitt,  John  Hamilton  Reynolds,  the 
stalwart  Allan  Cunningham,  the  Rev.  Henry  Francis  Gary, 
John  Poole,  George  Darley,  Bryan  Waller  Procter,  and 
Thomas  Hood.  This  last,  indeed,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
three,  was  a  kind  of  assistant  editor.  There  was  also  a 
certain  shabby-genteel  and  bejewelled  effeminate,  named 
Thomas  Griffith  Wainwright,  whose  department  was  the 
Fine  Arts,  and  who,  under  the  signature  of  "Janus  Weath- 
ercock," wrote  most  of  the  articles  on  great  painters  and 
engravers,  and  criticisms  of  contemporary  pictures.  He 
was  to  die  in  Australia  long  afterwards  as  a  convict  who 
had  been  transported  for  forgery,  but  who  was  known  also, 
by  evidence  irresistible,  as  the  murderer,  by  poison,  of  two 
young  ladies,  boarders  in  his  house,  on  whose  lives  he  had 
speculated  for  a  total  of  18,000^.  by  scattered  investments 
in  different  insurance  offices. 

It  is  curious  to  look  over  the  old  volumes  of  the  London 
Magazine  now,  and  to  observe  the  papers  in  them  that 
have  become  classic.  It  was  in  the  number  for  September, 
1821,  or  about  two  months  after  Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hes- 
sey  had  become  proprietors,  that  there  appeared  a  paper 
of  twenty  pages  entitled  Confessions  of  an  Opium-eater, 
being  an  Extract  from  the  Life  of  a  Scholar.  That  there 
were  unusual  expectations  of  popularity  for  this  piece  is 
proved  by  the  appended  editorial  note  (?  by  young  Hood), 
stating  that  "  the  remainder  of  this  very  interesting  article , 
will  be  given  in  the  next  number."  Accordingly,  the  num- 
ber for  October,  1821,  leads  off  with  Part  II.  of  the  Con- 
fessions in  twenty-seven  pages.  It  contains,  moreover,  a 
notice  from  the  author  explanatory  of  the  dates  in  the 
First  Part,  and  another  editorial  paragraph  of  congratula- 
tion over  the  new  contributor.  "  We  are  not  often  in  the 
habit  of  eulogizing  our  own  work,"  says  the  paragraph ; 


72  DE  QUINCET.  [ctar 

"  but  we  cannot  neglect  the  opportunity  which  the  follow- 
ing explanatory  note  gives  us  of  calling  the  attention  of 
our  readers  to  the  deep,  eloquent,  and  masterly  paper  which 
stands  first  in  our  present  number."  The  Confessions,  in 
fact,  were  widely  read,  and  roused  much  curiosity.  The 
cry,  on  all  hands,  was  for  more  of  the  same  extraordinary 
matter.  That  was  not  so  easy ;  but  in  the  number  for  De- 
cember, 1821,  there  appeared  a  letter  from  the  Opium- 
eater,  signed  "  X.  Y.  Z.,"  courteously  rebuking  Mr.  James 
Montgomery  for  his  scepticism  as  to  the  authenticity,  of 
the  Confessions,  and  promising  a  Third  Part  in  time. 
Meanwhile,  in  the  same  number,  the  public  had  from  the 
new  author,  signing  himself  "  Grasmeriensis  Teutonizans," 
a  paper  On  the  Writings  of  John  Paul  Frederick  Michter, 
including  a  translated  specimen.  Then,  for  a  whole  year, 
there  was  a  break,  the  promise  of  a  continuation  of  the 
Confessions  hanging  unfulfilled,  and  the  readers  of  the 
magazine  having  to  content  themselves  with  other  fare, 
the  best  morsel  of  which  was  Charles  Lamb's  "  Disserta- 
tion on  Roast  Pig,"  in  September,  1822.  In  that  year, 
1822,  however,  Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hessey  had  the  pleas- 
ure of  bringing  out  the  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium- 
eater  in  a  separate  little  duodecimo  volume,  the  author's 
name  still  suppressed.  They  would  fain  still  have  had  the 
promised  continuation  in  their  magazine,  and  apologized  to 
their  readers  for  not  having  been  able  to  fulfil  that  engage- 
ment. By  way  of  compensation,  they  were  glad  to  pub- 
lish, through  the  years  1823  and  1824,  everything  that  De 
Quincey  chose  to  give  them,  taking  care  that  it  should  be 
known  that  the  articles  were  by  "  The  English  Opium- 
eater." 

In  January,  1823,  were  begun  Letters  to  a  Young  Man 
whose  Education  has  been  Neglected,  continued  in  the  nura- 


Ttt]  THE  "LONDON  MAGAZINE."  73 

bers  for  February,  March,  May,  and  June ;  in  the  April 
number,  which  these  "  Letters "  had  skipped,  appeared  a 
sketch  of  Herder  under  the  title  The  Death  of  a  German 
Great  Man;  and,  not  to  mention  less  important  contribu- 
tions straggling  through  the  numbers  of  the  year,  the  Sep- 
tember number  contained  the  first  instalment,  and  the 
October  and  November  numbers  two  more  instalments,  of 
the  series  of  papers  entitled  generally  Notes  from  the  Pock- 
et-hook of  a  late  Opium-eater,  and  sub-titled  individually 
"  Walking  Stewart,"  "  Malthus,"  "  On  the  Knocking  at  the 
Gate  in  Macbeth,"  "  English  Dictionaries,"  &c.  In  Decem- 
ber, 1823,  an  Answer  of  the  Opium-eater  to  Mr.  HazlitVs 
Letter  respecting  Mr.  Malthus,  and  a  paper  On  Malthus's 
Measure  of  Value,  made  the  public  further  aware  of  the 
Opium  -  eater's  pretensions  in  Political  Economy.  The 
year  1824  was  not  less  prolific.  The  January  number  of 
that  year  gave  the  first  part  of  the  Opium-eater's  Historico- 
critical  Inquiry  into  the  Origin  of  the  Rosicrudans  and 
Freemasons,  continued  in  February  and  March,  and  not 
concluded  till  June ;  the  February  number  gave  also  Anor 
lects  from  John  Paul  Richter,  in  the  form  of  five  more 
translated  specimens  of  that  author;  the  March  number 
gave,  as  an  additional  specimen  of  Richter,  his  Dream  upon 
the  Universe ;  and  in  various  numbers  from  March  to  July 
there  were  further  instalments  of  Notes  from  the  Pocket- 
hook  of  a  late  Opium-eater.  Thus  we  arrive  at  the 
months  of  August  and  September,  1824,  made  memorable 
by  a  special  contribution  from  the  Opium-eater.  Another 
British  pioneer  of  German  Literature  had  recently  appear- 
ed in  Mr,  Thomas  Carlyle,  ten  years  younger  than  De 
Quincey,  and  of  limited  reputation  as  yet.  His  transla- 
tion of  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister  had  just  been  published 
anonymously  in  Edinburgh ;  and,  having  been  recommend* 
F    4* 


W  DE  QUINCEY.  [ctup. 

ed  to  the  London  Magazine  by  Edward  Irving,  lie  was 
breaking  up,  to  be  sent  from  Scotland,  for  anonymous 
publication  in  that  magazine,  his  Life  of  Schiller,  then  in 
manuscript.  The  first  portion  of  the  Life  had  appeared 
in  the  number  for  October,  1823  ;  the  second  portion  had 
appeared  in  the  number  for  January,  1824,  along  with  the 
first  instalment  of  De  Quincey's  Kosicrucian  Inquiry ;  the 
third  had  appeared  in  July,  1824  (Carlyle  then  on  his  first 
visit  to  London) ;  and  the  remainder  came  out  in  August 
and  September.  It  was  rather  hard  that  in  those  very 
two  numbers  there  should  appear  De  Quincey's  article  on 
Goethe,  founded  on  his  fellow-contributor's  Translation  of 
'  Wilhelm  Meister.  In  the  main,  it  is  true,  the  article  was 
an  onslaught  on  Goethe  himself — an  attempt  to  drag  him 
down  from  the  eminence  claimed  for  him  by  his  translator 
and  others,  and  to  represent  him  as  a  tedious  and  immoral 
old  impostor;  but  the  translator  came  in  for  a  share  of 
the  blame.  He  was  taken  to  task  for  his  Scotticisms,  his 
mistakes  in  the  German,  and  generally  for  the  stiffness  and 
awkwardness  of  his  English  prose.  Altogether  the  critique 
was,  as  Carlyle  has  owned,  a  rather  annoying  log  of  offence 
thrown  across  his  path  at  that  moment.  After  the  article 
on  Goethe,  De  Quincey's  contributions  to  the  magazine  in 
1824  were  Walladmor :  Analysis  of  a  German  Novel,  and 
a  translation  of  Kant's  Idea  of  a  Universal  History  on  a 
Cosmopolitical  Plan,  both  in  the  October  number;  and 
a  paper  entitled  Falsification  of  the  History  of  England, 
which  appeared  in  the  number  for  December. 

The  connexion  of  De  Quincey  with  the  London  Maga- 
zine seems  to  have  ceased  after  1824,  in  consequence  of 
arrangements  about  that  time  by  Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hes- 
sey  for  quitting  the  proprietorship.  But  others  were  on 
the  alert  for  anything  from  the  pen  of  "The  Opium-eat- 


Tn.]  ,        LIFE  IN  LONDON.  M 

er.'*  Mr.  Charles  Knight,  who  had  started  his  KnigMs 
Quarterly  Magazine  in  1823,  and  who  counted  the  brill- 
iant young  Macaulay  and  the  brilliant  young  Praed  on  his 
staff,  had  obtained  at  least  one  article  from  De  Quincey, 
and  had  become  personally  acquainted  with  him  in  July, 
1824,  with  a  view  to  more.  But  a  good  deal  of  De  Quin- 
cey's  time  in  the  year  1825  was  taken  up  with  a  wretched 
piece  of  literary  business  into  which  he  had  been  lured  by 
his  own  analysis  of  the  German  novel  Walladmor  in  the 
London  Magazine  of  October,  1824.  The  said  Wallad- 
mor was  a  German  fabrication,  in  the  shape  of  a  pretended 
"  New  Romance  by  the  Author  of  Waverley,"  brought  out 
at  Leipsic  at  a  time  when  there  was  a  lull  in  the  produc- 
tion of  those  real  Waverley  Novels  without  which  German 
readers,  as  well  as  British,  found  life  insipid.  Germany 
was  deceived  from  end  to  end  by  the  three-volume  substi- 
tute for  the  absent  reality.  The  first  copy  imported  into 
England  having  come  into  De  Quincey's  hands,  he  had 
scribbled  his  article  on  it  for  the  magazine  as  rapidly  as 
he  could,  with  the  unfortunate  effect  that,  having  hit  on 
some  passages  of  merit  and  translated  them,  he  was  com- 
missioned by  Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hessey  to  translate  the 
whole.  When  he  became  better  acquainted  with  the  rub- 
bish he  would  gladly  have  been  free  from  the  tast;  but, 
as  that  could  not  be,  he  took  his  revenge  by  treating  the 
affair  as  a  practical  joke.  He  so  cut  and  carved  the  origi- 
nal, and  De  Quinceyfied  it  by  insertions  and  compressions, 
as  to  be  able  to  bring  out,  in  the  course  of  1825,  an  Eng- 
lish Walladmor  in  two  volumes,  with  a  prefixed  "  dedica- 
tion "  of  elaborate  banter. 

And  so,  from  1821  to  1825,  or  between  De  Quincey's 
thirty-seventh  and  his  forty-first  year,  we  have  the  first 
burst  of  his  magazine  articles  and  cognate  publications. 
31 


76  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

If  he  had  come  late  into  the  field  of  literature,  he  had  come 
into  it  at  last  with  one  advantage.  There  had  been  in* 
mense,  if  unintended,  preparation ;  De  Quincey's  articles, 
like  George  Eliot's  novels  afterwards,  had  not  to  be  spun 
out  of  a  vacuum.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that 
De  Quincey's  sudden  leap  into  celebrity  was  due  in  great 
part  to  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  articles  by  which  he  had 
chosen  to  introduce  himself.  There  was  something  almost 
staggering  in  the  act  of  self-exposure  by  which  a  man  con- 
sented that  he  should  be  known  as  "The  Opium-eater," 
not  figuratively  or  fictitiously,  as  some  at  first  supposed, 
but  with  the  most  positive  assurances  that  his  revelations 
were  real  excerpts  from  his  own  life.  The  signature  of 
"The  Opium-eater"  to  any  article  whatever  became 
thenceforward  an  attraction.  Not  that  this  would  have 
lasted  long  had  there  not  been  recompense  in  superlative 
measure  in  the  articles  themselves.  But  who  could  deny 
that  there  was  such  recompense  ?  Here,  evidently,  was  no 
common  writer,  no  dullard  or  hack,  but  a  new  man  of  gen- 
ius, a  new  power  in  English  prose  literature.  There  was 
proclamation  of  the  fact  in  a  quarter  whence  a  favorable 
verdict  was  then  of  some  value.  As  early  as  October, 
1823,  "The  Opium-eater"  had  been  made  to  figure  as  a 
colloquist  in  Wilson's  Nodes  Ambrosiance  ;  and  again,  in 
October,  1825,  there  was  a  passage  in  the  Nodes  praising 
De  Quincey  as  "  a  man  of  a  million."  This,  of  course, 
was  kindness  on  Wilson's  part ;  but  it  was  no  exaggera- 
tion of  the  current  opinion. 

What  meanwhile,  through  the  four  years  of  his  grow- 
ing celebrity, had  De  Quincey  himself  been  doing  ?  Though 
Grasmere  was  still  his  nominal  head-quarters  (where,  indeed, 
his  books  and  papers  had  by  this  time  overfiowed  his  own 
cottage  at  Townend,  and  invaded  his  father-in-law's  cottage 


vii]  LIFE  IN  LONDON.  W 

of  Rydal  Nab,  if  not  a  third  cottage  adjacent),  the  clear 
inference  from  the  records  is  that  from  1821  to  1825  he 
resided  chiefly  in  London.  There  is  a  very  interesting 
note  on  the  subject,  though  with  some  exaggeration  of  the 
fact,  in  Bohn's  edition  of  Lowndes's  Bibliographer's  Man- 
ual. "  The  Confessions,^^  Mr.  Bohn  says,  "  were  written  in 
a  little  room  at  the  back  of  Mr.  H.  Gr.  Bohn's  premises, 
No.  4  York  Street,  Covent  Garden,  where  Mr.  De  Quincey 
resided,  in  comparative  seclusion,  for  several  years.  He 
had  previously  lived  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Soho  Square, 
and  for  some  years  was  a  frequent  visitor  to  the  shop  of 
Mr.  Bohn's  father,  then  the  principal  dealer  in  German 
books.  The  writer  remembers  that  he  always  seemed  to 
speak  in  a  kind  of  whisper."  From  De  Quincey's  own 
reminiscences  we  gather  some  other  particulars.  It  was 
during  the  time  of  his  connexion  with  the  London  Magazine 
that  he  came  thoroughly  to  know  Lamb  and  his  sister  and 
saw  most  of  them.  They  were  excessively  kind  to  him, 
insisting  on  his  coming  from  his  solitary  lodgings  as  often 
as  possible  to  dine  and  spend  the  evening  with  them ;  and 
he  describes  some  of  those  quiet  evenings  with  the  Lambs 
very  tenderly  and  prettily,  testifying  the  increase  of  his 
regard  for  the  good  brother  and  sister  the  more  he  knew 
of  their  heroic  relations  to  each  other,  and  of  their  real 
benevolence.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  frequently 
at  the  monthly  dinners  given  by  Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hes- 
sey  to  their  magazine  staff,  and  at  which  Lamb,  as  the 
chief  of  the  wits  round  the  table,  always  stuttered  and 
sparkled  at  his  brightest.  Barry  Cornwall  could  remem- 
ber De  Quincey's  appearance  at  only  one  of  those  din- 
ners, when  "  the  expression  of  his  face  was  intelligent,  but 
cramped  and  somewhat  peevish,"  and  when  he  "  was  self- 
involved  and  did  not  add  to  the  cheerfulness  of  the  meet- 


'78  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

ing."  This  may  have  been  at  the  particular  dinner  of 
November,  1821,  at  which,  as  De  Quincey  tells  us  himself, 
he  met  Mr.  Wainwright  among  the  company,  did  not  like 
him,  and  rather  wondered  why  Lamb  paid  him  so  much 
attention.  Walks  with  Hazlitt  and  little  angry  discussions 
with  him,  and  glimpses  of  young  Talf  curd  and  other  lights 
rising  or  risen  on  the  skirts  of  Messrs.  Taylor  &  Hessey's 
literary  group,  are  also  to  be  imagined.  The  sub-editorial 
calls  at  his  lodgings  by  young  Thomas  Hood,  on  the  "  fre- 
quent and  agreeable  duty"  of  dunning  him  for  copy, 
must  not  be  forgotten.  Then  it  was,  as  Hood  liked  to  re- 
member in  after-years,  that  he  used  to  find  De  Quincey 
*'  in  the  midst  of  a  German  Ocean  of  Literature,"  his  room 
flooded  and  plugged  with  books,  and  that,  invited  some- 
times to  stay,  he  would  listen  with  amazement  to  the 
strange  tenant  of  the  rooms  far  into  the  small  hours.  He 
still  retained  a  memento  of  those  visits,  he  adds,  in  the 
original  manuscript  of  one  of  De  Quincey's  papers,  exhib- 
iting the  stain  of  "  a  large  purplish  ring  "  where  the  tum- 
bler of  laudanum  negus  had  rested  on  it.  For,  in  his  Lon- 
don solitude,  and  apparently  in  1823-24,  the  author  of 
the  Confessions,  who  had  signified  that  the  days  of  his 
opium-eating  were  past,  had  again  succumbed.  What  with 
this  relapse  into  his  old  habit,  what  with  the  constant  de- 
pression of  his  ill-health,  he  was  again  very  wretched ;  and 
the  picture  we  have  to  form  of  him  in  those  days  from  all 
the  preserved  memorials  is  the  very  reverse  of  that  which 
would  have  been  natural  in  any  other  case  of  such  sudden- 
ly attained  literary  distinction.  Not  as  a  lion  in  general 
society  or  as  a  frequenter  of  club-dinners,  or  even  as  a  man 
at  home  of  his  own  accord  in  the  houses  of  a  few  select 
friends,  is  the  De  Quincey  of  1821-25  to  be  figured,  but 
rather  as  the  confirmed  and  incurable  eccentric,  the  in- 


vn.]  LIFE  IN  LONDON.  19 

carnation  of  shy  nervousness,  that  he  was  to  be  for  all  the 
rest  of  his  life.  He  avoided  intercourse  with  his  fellow- 
creatures  as  much  as  he  could,  and  was  happy,  if  he  was 
ever  happy,  only  in  solitary  afternoon  walks  about  Covent 
Garden  and  the  Strand,  where  he  could  observe  passers-by 
and  look  into  shop-windows,  or  in  longer  rambles  at  night 
out  into  unknown  suburbs,  whence  he  could  return,  by 
silent  circuits  of  roads,  to  his  own  book-blocked  room  and 
the  laudanum  negus. 

Now,  as  afterwards,  friends  and  admirers  who  desired 
his  intimacy  had,  as  it  were,  to  break  in  upon  him.  We 
do  hear  of  one  or  two  such  friendly  inroads  on  his  com- 
fortless privacy.  Thus,  in  the  summer  of  1824,  Mr.  Mat- 
thew Davenport  Hill  sought  him  out,  and  roused  him  not 
a  little.  More  effective  still  seems  to  have  been  Mr.  Charles 
Knight's  acquaintanceship  with  him,  begun,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  the  interests  of  KnigMs  Quarterly  Magazine. 
Mr.  Knight,  six  years  younger  than  De  Quincey,  and  ar- 
dent in  literature  in  those  days  with  even  more  than  the 
usual  ardour  of  a  young  publisher,  liked  nothing  better 
than  to  get  De  Quincey  to  dine  with  him,  or  stay  with 
him  awhile,  in  his  house  in  Pall  Mall  East.  "  0 !  for  an 
hour  of  De  Quincey  I"  he  wrote  years  afterwards,  in  recol- 
lection of  those  evenings  in  comparison  with  any  he  had 
spent  in  the  interval;  and  he  has  handed  down  several 
anecdotes  illustrative  of  the  incredible  helplessness  of  the 
Kttle  guest  whom  he  and  his  household  so  liked  to  shelter. 
One  day  in  1825,  Mr.  Knight,  returning  from  Windsor, 
found  that  De  Quincey,  whom  he  had  left  in  his  house  in 
Pall  Mall  East,  had  departed  abruptly,  leaving  word  that 
he  had  gone  home  to  Westmoreland.  Knowing  that  he 
had  intended  to  go  thither,  and  had  only  been  waiting  for 
a  remittance  from  his  mother,  to  "  satisfy  some  clamorous 


80  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

creditors  "  before  he  went,  Mr.  Knight  thought  nothing  of 
the  matter.  In  a  few  days,  however,  he  heard  that  De 
Quincey  was  still  in  town,  and  in  a  dreadful  diflBculty. 
Following  the  clue  to  his  whereabouts,  he  found  him  in  a 
miserable  lodging  on  the  Surrey  side  of  the  river,  his 
"  dreadful  diflBculty "  being  that  the  expected  remittance 
had  reached  him  in  the  form  of  a  large  draft  on  a  London 
bank,  payable  at  twenty-one  days'  sight,  and  that  he  had 
been  informed,  on  going  to  Lombard  Street,  that  the  draft 
could  not  be  cashed  till  the  time  was  up.  Too  shy  to  re- 
turn to  Mr.  Knight's  house  and  explain  why  he  had  come 
back,  he  had  gone,  for  accommodation  for  the  twenty-one 
days,  into  a  hiding-hole  where  he  was  really  not  safe  from 
being  robbed ;  and  it  was  with  surprise,  as  well  as  delight, 
that  he  received  Mr.  Knight's  assurance  that  the  diflBculty 
about  the  draft  was  not  insuperable,  and  he  might  have 
the  cash  at  once. 

Mr.  Knight's  anecdote  fits  in  but  too  well  with  other 
proofs  that  one  of  the  causes  of  De  Quincey's  moping  and 
evasive  habits  through  the  time  of  his  London  life  was 
excruciating  pecuniary  embarrassment.  And  no  wonder. 
The  calculation  even  now  is  that  a  writer  for  magazines 
and  reviews  can  hardly,  by  his  utmost  industry,  unless  he 
is  also  on  the  stafl[  of  a  newspaper,  or  is  exceptionally  re- 
tained by  a  fixed  engagement — as  Southey  and  Macaulay 
were — make  more  than  2501.  a  year.  On  that  hypothesis 
it  is  not  diflBcult  to  compute  that  all  De  Quincey's  earn- 
ings between  1821  and  1825,  by  the  London  Magazine  or 
whatever  else,  must  have  been  a  poor  provision  for  the  ex- 
penses of  himself  in  London  and  of  his  family  at  Gras- 
mere.  In  fact,  however  it  happened,  he  was  so  much  in 
debt,  and  so  hard-pressed  for  money,  as  to  be  on  this  ac- 
count also  desperately  miserable.     "At this  time,"  he  had 


til]  life  in  LONDON.  SI 

written  to  Professor  Wilson,  in  Edinburgh,  on  the  24th  of 
February,  1825,  "  I  am  quite  free  from  opium ;  but  it  has 
left  the  liver — the  Achilles'  heel  of  almost  every  human 
fabric — subject  to  affections  which  are  tremendous  for  the 
weight  of  wretchedness  attached  to  them.  To  fence  with 
these  with  the  one  hand,  and  with  the  other  to  maintain 
the  war  with  the  wretched  business  of  hack-author,  with 
all  its  horrible  degradations,  is  more  than  I  am  able  to 
bear.  At  this  moment  I  have  not  a  place  to  hide  my  head 
in.  Something  I  meditate — I  know  not  what.  .  .  .  With 
a  good  publisher  and  leisure  to  premeditate  what  I  write,  I 
might  yet  liberate  myself :  after  which,  having  paid  every- 
body, I  would  slink  into  some  dark  comer,  educate  my 
children,  and  show  my  face  in  the  world  no  more."  He 
adds  that  he  may  be  addressed  either  "  to  the  care  of  Mrs. 
De  Quincey,  Rydal  Nab,  Westmoreland,"  or  "  to  the  care 
of  M.  D.  Hill,  Esq.,  11  King's  Bench  Walk,  Temple ;"  but 
that  the  latter  address  might  be  the  better,  because  he 
would  rather  not  be  tracked  too  precisely  at  present.  Per- 
haps it  was  the  "  large  draft "  of  Mr.  Knight's  anecdote 
that  cleared  the  way  for  the  desired  return  to  Westmore- 
land. Not  at  this  point  only  in  De  Quincey's  biography 
has  the  reader  to  suspect  "  remittances  from  his  mother '' 
of  which  there  is  no  distinct  record. 

De  Quincey  was  certainly  back  in  Westmoreland  before 
the  end  of  1825,  and  in  circumstances  tolerably  easy  after 
his  late  London  experience.  "Thank  God,  you  are  not 
now  domineered  over  by  circumstances,  and  may  your  no- 
ble nature  never  more  be  disturbed  but  by  its  own  work- 
ings 1"  we  find  Wilson  writing  to  him  from  Edinburgh  on 
the  12th  November  in  that  year.  The  letter,  which  begins 
"  My  dear  Plato,"  speaks  of  promised  contributions  by  De 
Quincey  to  a  forthcoming  volume  of  miscellanies  which 


82  DE  QUmCEY.  [cHiy. 

Wilson  and  Lockhart  had  projected,  under  the  name  of 
Janus,  or  the  Edinburgh  Literary  Almanac.  It  also  ad- 
verts to  Lockhart's  commencing  editorship  of  the  Quar- 
terly Review,  and  to  the  interest  De  Quincey  may  have  in 
that  event.  "  He  knows  your  great  talents,  and  will,  I 
know,  act  in  the  most  gentlemanly  spirit  to  all  contribu- 
tors ;"  and  why  should  not  De  Quincey  be  thinking  of  a 
noble  article  on  Kant  for  the  new  editor  ? 

Though  Janus  had  to  appear  in  the  beginning  of  1826 
without  De  Quincey's  hand  in  it,  Wilson's  letter  prepares 
us  for  the  next  important  stage  in  his  literary  life.  This 
was  his  connexion,  through  Wilson,  with  Blackwood's  Mag- 
azine. It  began  by  the  publication  in  the  number  of  that 
magazine  for  November,  1826,  of  the  first  portion  of  an 
article  on  Lessing,  entitled  Lessing's  Laocoon,  translated 
with  Notes.  The  second  portion  appeared  in  the  number 
for  January,  1827;  and  was  followed  in  February,  1827, 
by  The  Last  Bays  of  Immanuel  Kant  and  the  famous  es- 
say On  Murder  considered  as  One  of  the  Fine  Arts ;  and 
in  March,  1827,  appeared  the  paper  entitled  Toilette  of  the 
Hebrew  Lady.  After  an  interval — i.  e.,  in  August,  1830 — 
there  was  another  paper  on  Kant,  entitled  Kant  in  kis 
Miscellaneous  Essays. 

The  connexion  with  Blackwood  very  naturally  drew  De 
Quincey  himself  once  more  to  Edinburgh.  Accordingly, 
through  the  years  1827,  1828,  and  1829,  we  find  him 
quite  as  much  in  Edinburgh  as  at  Grasmere.  He  was, 
of  course,  no  stranger  there,  but  moved  about  familiarly 
among  such  surviving  friends  of  his  former  visits  as  were 
still  resident  in  the  city.  Wilson  was  his  mainstay,  the 
man  who  had  known  him  longest  and  understood  him 
best,  and  whose  own  joviality  of  disposition  made  it 
easier  for  him  than  it  would  have  been  for  most  to  tol- 


Til.]         BETWEEN  GRASMERE  AND  EDINBURGH.  83 

erate  the  eccentricities  of  such  a  weird  little  son  of  genius 
and  opium.  Wilson's  house  in  Gloucester  Place  was  at 
De  Quincey's  disposal  when  he  liked ;  and  one  of  the  best 
sketches  of  De  Quincey  is  that  by  Wilson's  daughter,  Mrs. 
Gordon,  in  her  life  of  her  father,  where  she  gives  her  recol- 
lections of  the  Opium-eater's  troublesome  irregularities 
of  habit  in  the  house,  the  cook's  difficulties  with  him  and 
profound  reverence  for  him,  and  all  the  while  Wilson's 
magnanimous  laugh  at  the  whole  concern.  It  was  at  this 
time  too,  and  indirectly  through  Wilson,  that  Carlyle  first 
saw  something  of  De  Quincey  personally.  They  met,  I 
think,  at  the  house  of  one  of  Wilson's  friends,  after  which 
there  were  calls  from  De  Quincey  at  Comely  Bank,  where 
Carlyle  and  his  wife  had  their  Edinburgh  home  between 
their  marriage  in  1826  and  their  removal  to  the  Dumfries- 
shire solitude  of  Craigenputtock  in  1828.  At  first,  De 
Quincey,  remembering  his  review  of  Carlyle's  Translation 
of  Wilhelm  Meister,  was  obviously  ill  at  ease ;  but,  that 
matter  left  unmentioned,  the  meetings  seem  to  have  been 
pleasant  enough  on  both  sides.  That  Carlyle's  interest 
in  De  Quincey,  at  all  events,  was  far  from  small  at  this 
time  is  proved  by  his  long  letter  from  Craigenputtock, 
of  December  11,  1828,  inviting  De  Quincey  to  visit  him 
and  his  wife  there.  "Our  warmest  welcome,  and  such 
solacements  as  even  the  desert  does  not  refuse,"  Carlyle 
writes,  "  are  at  any  time  and  at  all  times  in  store  for  one 
we  love  so  well ;"  and,  after  a  humorous  description  of 
a  possible  colony  or  social  college  of  like-minded  spirits 
on  the  moors  round  Craigenputtock,  there  is  the  compli- 
mentary addition,  "  Would  you  come  hither  and  be  king 
over  us,  then  indeed  we  had  made  a  fair  beginning,  and 
the  Bog  School  might  snap  its  fingers  at  the  Lake  School.^* 
Nearer  the  end  of  the  letter  came  these  significant  words, 


U  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

"  Believe  it,  you  are  well  loved  here,  and  none  feels  bet- 
ter than  I  what  a  spirit  is  for  the  present  eclipsed  in 
clouds.  For  the  present  it  can  only  be ;  time  and  chance 
are  for  all  men;  that  troublous  season  will  end."  Evi- 
dently De  Quincey's  troubles  of  various  kinds  were  cling- 
ing to  him  in  Edinburgh,  and  Carlyle  knew  all. 

The  pecuniary  trouble,  for  one,  had  not  ceased.  It  was 
a  great  thing,  doubtless,  to  be  a  writer  in  Blackwood; 
but  a  few  articles  in  that  magazine  in  the  course  of  four 
years  could  not  do  much  towards  the  support  of  the  man 
of  letters  in  Edinburgh  and  of  his  wife  and  young  ones 
in  the  Vale  of  Grasmere.  There  was  income,  doubtless, 
from  other  sources — perhaps  from  periodicals  in  London, 
perhaps  from  newspapers,  and  certainly  from  the  Edin- 
burgh Literary  Gazette,  a  weekly  periodical  then  of  some 
note  in  Edinburgh,  to  which  De  Quincey  contributed  oc- 
casionally through  1828,  1829,  and  1830.  But  the  de- 
ficit altogether  must  have  been  serious  and  growing. 
What  was  the  remedy?  Poor  as  the  pastures  in  Edin- 
burgh were,  they  were  better  than  were  likely  to  be  found 
anywhere  else.  His  chief  existing  engagements  were  there ; 
and  nowhere  else  did  farther  engagements  seem  so  easy. 
Why,  then,  keep  up  two  households,  or  pretences  of  a 
household,  one  in  Edinburgh  and  one  in  Westmoreland? 
Why  should  not  Mrs.  De  Quincey  and  her  children  leave 
their  native  vale  and  be  domiciled  with  De  Quincey  per- 
manently in  Edinburgh  ?  Both  De  Quincey  and  his  wife 
were  adverse  to  the  idea  of  leaving  Grasmere;  but  at 
length,  in  1830,  apparently  on  the  spur  of  some  new  offer 
of  literary  engagement  in  Edinburgh,  the  resolution  was 
taken.  It  was  precipitated  by  the  advice  of  the  excellent 
and  sensible  Dorothy  Wordsworth.  In  a  long  letter  of 
Dorothy's  to  De  Quincey,  giving  him  an  account  of  a 


vii.]  REMOVAL  TO  EDINBURGH.  86 

visit  sLe  had  paid  to  his  cottage  just  after  her  return  to 
Rydal  Mount  from  a  tour,  she  tells  him  she  had  found 
his  wife  well,  but  "  with  something  of  sadness  in  her  man- 
ner "  when  she  spoke  of  the  likelihood  of  his  detention 
in  Edinburgh  by  a  certain  new  engagement  of  which  she 
had  heard  vaguely.  Dorothy's  reply,  she  informs  De 
Quincey,  had  been,  "  Why  not  settle  there,  for  the  time 
at  least  that  this  engagement  lasts?  Lodgings  are  cheap 
in  Edinburgh,  and  provisions  and  coals  not  dear."  Mrs. 
De  Quincey,  having  acquiesced,  had  asked  Dorothy  to 
write  on  the  subject  to  De  Quincey ;  and  hence  her  letter. 
She  there  repeats  her  advice  in  greater  detail,  with  all  deli- 
cacy but  very  practically.  The  first  step  taken  in  the  di- 
rection of  the  advice  seems  to  have  been  the  removal  of 
the  elder  children  from  Grasmere  to  Edinburgh;  but  in 
1 830  Mrs.  De  Quincey  and  the  younger  children  followed. 
The  cottage  in  Grasmere  was  nominally  retained  as  De 
Quincey's  for  some  years  more;  but  from  1830  Edin- 
burgh, and  Edinburgh  all  but  alone,  was  to  contain  him 
and  his,  and  their  united  fortunes,  so  long  as  he  remained 
in  the  world.  He  was  then  forty-five  years  of  age,  and 
his  wife  about  two-and-thirty. 


CHAPTER  Vm. 

WHOLLY     IN     EDINBURGH. FURTHER     CONTRIBUTIONS     TO 

"  BLACKWOOD"    AND    ARTICLES   IN    "  TAIt's   MAGAZINE." 

[1830-1840.] 

Edinburgh  from  1830  to  1840  was  a  very  excellent  place 
of  residence.  The  indestructible  natural  beauties  of  her 
site  and  surroundings,  the  extraordinary  combination  of 
dense  and  antique  picturesqueness  with  modern  elegance 
and  spaciousness  in  the  plan  and  architecture  of  her  streets 
and  slopes,  and  the  wealth  of  her  interesting  traditions 
from  the  past,  were  not  her  only  recommendations.  A 
pleasant  and  varied  social  activity  still  characterized  her 
as  the  metropolis  of  Scotland,  and  an  unusual  number  of 
persons  of  greater  or  less  note  individually  moved  among 
her  130,000  or  160,000  inhabitants.  Her  greatest  man, 
it  is  true,  was  lost  to  her  in  1832,  when  Scott  died,  and 
heads  could  no  longer  be  turned  to  look  at  his  venerated 
figure  as  he  limped  along  Princes  Street.  But  JefErey 
remained  Lord  Advocate  of  Scotland  from  1830  to  1834, 
and  thenceforward  a  Judge  with  the  title  of  Lord  Jeffrey, 
only  ex-editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  now,  and  not 
writing  much  more,  but  still  the  literary  pride  of  the  Edin- 
burgh Whigs.  Wilson,  on  the  other  hand,  as  the  "  Chris- 
topher North  "  of  Blackwood  and  the  eloquent  and  adored 
University  Professor,  was  in  his  most  exuberant  prime — 
Scott's  successor,  so  far  as  there  was  one,  in  the  literary 


CHAP.  Tin.]    EDINBURGH  BETWEEN   1830  AND  1840.  87 

chiefship  of  Edinburgh  Toryism — and  the  observed  of  all 
observers,  Whig  or  Tory,  for  his  lion-like  gait  and  gesture, 
wild  yellow  hair,  and  frequent  white  hat.  Then,  among 
Jeffrey's  colleagues  or  subordinates  in  the  Parliament 
House,  or  Wilson's  associates  in  the  University,  or  belong- 
ing to  both  fraternities,  or  distributed  in  divers  posts  and 
professions  through  the  city,  what  a  miscellany  of  other 
local  celebrities!  Among  the  lawyers,  on  the  bench  or 
rising  to  it,  were  Moncreiff,  Cockburn,  Patrick  Robertson, 
Rutherfurd,  Ivory,  and  Murray.  Among  the  University 
Professors,  in  one  or  other  of  the  faculties,  were  Sir  Wil- 
liam Hamilton  (first  in  the  chair  of  History,  and  after 
1836  in  that  of  Logic  and  Metaphysics),  Dr.  Chalmers 
(brought  to  Edinburgh  in  1828  as  Professor  of  Theology), 
Dunbar,  Pillans,  Welsh,  Macvey  Napier,  Jameson,  Hope, 
Monro  tertius,  Sir  Charles  Bell,  Pulteney  Alison,  Syme, 
Christison,  and  (from  1835)  George  Moir.  Conspicuous 
in  science  or  in  medicine  out  of  the  University  were  Dr. 
Abercrombie,  Sir  David  Brewster,  Andrew  and  George 
Combe,  and  others.  McCrie,  the  biographer  of  Knox, 
was  alive  for  part  of  the  time ;  before  the  ten  years  were 
out  Candlish  and  Guthrie  were  in  their  Edinburgh  pulpits ; 
and  those  who  preferred  milder  or  Episcopalian  pastorship 
could  "  sit  under  "  the  Rev.  E.  B.  Ramsay,  afterwards  Dean 
Ramsay,  or  the  Rev.  Robert  Morehead.  There  was  a  flour- 
ishing Edinburgh  theatre,  with  the  accomplished  Mr.  Mur- 
ray as  manager  and  one  of  the  actors,  and  with  Mackay 
as  the  non-such  in  "  Bailie  Nicol  Jarvie,"  "  Caleb  Balder- 
stone,"  and  other  comic  characters  in  the  dramas  from 
Scott's  novels.  Among  resident  representatives  of  the 
Fine  Arts  were  Sir  William  Allan,  Watson  Gordon,  Har- 
vey, Duncan,  and  the  recluse  and  abstruse  David  Scott ; 
and  among  resident,  or  all  but  resident,  representatives  of 


88  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

literature  not  already  mentioned,  most  of  them  lawyers 
and  in  training  for  legal  posts  or  professorships,  were 
Thomas  Thomson,  Sir  Thomas  Dick  Lauder,  David  Laing, 
Charles  Kirkpatrick  Sharpe,  David  Macbeth  Moir,  Henry 
Glassford  Bell,  Archibald  Alison,  William  and  Robert 
Chambers,  Ferrier,  Spalding,  Thomas  Aird,  Hill  Burton, 
John  Thomson  Gordon,  and  William  Edmonstoune  Ay- 
toun.  Lady  Nairne,  the  woman  of  finest  lyric  genius 
Scotland  has  produced,  unless  Lady  Wardlaw  may  be 
compared  with  her,  was  living  in  the  near  vicinity,  her 
claims  to  authorship  of  any  kind  as  yet  undivulged ;  and 
the  best -known  literary  ladies  of  Edinburgh  were  Miss 
Ferrier  and  Mrs.  Johnstone.  The  chief  newspapers  were 
the  Scotsman,  edited  by  Mr.  Charles  Maclaren ;  and  the 
Caledonian  Mercury/,  edited  by  Dr.  James  Browne ;  and 
the  two  editors  had  fought  a  duel.  An  event  of  real  im- 
portance was  the  foundation  of  Chambers's  Edinburgh 
Journal,  by  Messrs.  William  and  Robert  Chambers,  in 
1832,  superseding  the  previous  literary  weeklies  of  the 
city,  and  setting  the  example  of  cheapness  for  all  future 
British  periodicals.  The  Reform  Bill  agitation  for  some 
time,  and  then  the  other  agitations  that  grew  out  of  that, 
provided  political  hot  water  in  abundance  for  the  ten 
years;  and  in  no  community  was  the  supply  kept  at  a 
higher  temperature.  If  you  lived  in  Edinburgh  between 
1830  and  1840  you  must  be  a  Whig  or  a  Tory;  on  one 
or  other  of  those  two  stools  you  were  compelled  to  sit,  as 
by  a  law  of  human  existence ;  they  would  not  permit  you 
to  try  both,  or  to  stand,  or  to  walk  about.  Further,  as  the 
mere  mention  of  the  name  of  Dr.  Chalmers  will  have  sug- 
gested, that  was  the  time  of  this  great  man's  energetic 
leadership  in  the  ecclesiastical  politics  of  Scotland,  and  of 
the  beginnings  of  that  ecclesiastical  strife  which,  manifest- 


Tin.]  IN  EDINBURGH.  89 

ing  itself  more  fiercely  from  year  to  year  in  the  annual 
General  Assemblies  of  the  Kirk  in  Edinburgh,  had  its 
final  issue  in  1843  in  the  disruption  of  the  Scottish  Es- 
tablishment. 

Such  was  the  Edinburgh  within  which  the  English 
eccentric  and  visionary  was  enclosed  from  his  forty-sixth 
year  to  his  fifty-sixth.  We  know  now  what  to  think  of 
him  in  his  relations  to  the  community  in  which  he  had 
sought  refuge.  If  we  set  aside  Dr.  Chalmers,  a  really 
great  man,  cast  in  nature's  largest  mould,  but  not  specially 
a  man  of  letters,  and  if  we  set  aside  also  Sir  William 
Hamilton,  as  less  the  man  of  letters  than  the  scholastic 
thinker,  then  in  all  Edinburgh,  after  Scott's  death,  with 
due  exception  for  the  uncombed  strength  and  barbaric 
word-splendours  of  Christopher  North,  the  most  impor- 
tant intellectual  figure  was  the  shy  little  English  stranger. 
It  was  De  Quincey  that  the  real  lovers  of  literature  in 
Edinburgh  ought  to  have  sought  out,  if  they  wanted  to 
put  the  very  rarest  they  had  amongst  them  on  a  pedestal 
in  front  of  the  Register  House,  to  be  publicly  saluted  and 
gazed  at.  They  did  nothing  of  the  kind.  It  was  not 
known  to  the  vast  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  Edin- 
burgh that  anybody  of  the  name  of  De  Quincey  was  liv- 
ing among  them ;  and  even  the  young  lovers  of  literature 
that  knew  a  little  about  him  all  but  invariably  misspelt 
his  name  when  they  wrote  it  or  printed  it.  The  reasons 
are  pretty  obvious.  Merely  as  an  Englishman,  De  Quin- 
cey was  somewhat  out  of  his  element.  He  was  in  Edin- 
burgh, but  not  of  Edinburgh,  a  little  put  out  by  the  Scot- 
tish "  iSawbath,"  as  he  used  to  write  it  jocularly,  and 
by  cognate  observances  (though  in  this  he  had  native 
sympathizers),  and  not  in  touch  with  any  part  of  the 
municipal  tumult  around  him.  But  much  more  was  his 
G      5 


90  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

social  insignificance  owing  to  the  fact  that  he  was  sim- 
ply De  Quincey.  By  temperament  and  habit  he  was  a 
creature  evasive  of  all  publicity,  a  "fantastical  duke 
of  dark  corners;"  and  he  had  seen  too  many  specimens 
of  literary  eminence  already,  in  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
and  others,  to  have  much  passion  left  for  such  new  lit- 
erary acquaintanceships  as  Edinburgh  might  afford.  In 
fact,  he  did  not  care  very  much  where  he  was,  if  only 
people  would  not  ask  him  out  to  dinner,  but  would  leave 
him  alone  with  his  books,  his  manuscripts,  and  his 
opium. 

The  literary  industry  of  De  Quincey  through  the  ten 
years  is  represented  mainly  by  the  list  of  his  continued 
contributions  to  Blackwood,  and  by  a  series  of  contribu- 
tions to  another  Edinburgh  monthly,  called  TaWs  Maga- 
zine. In  Blackwood  for  1831  appeared  Dr.  Parr  and  his 
Contemporaries,  or  Whiggism  in  its  Relations  to  Litera- 
ture; in  the  same  magazine,  under  the  title  of  The 
CcBsars,  there  was  begun,  in  October,  1832,  a  series  of 
articles  on  Roman  History  which  extended  over  four  sub- 
sequent numbers;  in  November,  1832,  appeared  the  arti- 
cle entitled  Charlemfigne ;  and  in  April,  1833,  appeared 
The  Hevolution  of  Greece.  There  was  then  an  interrup- 
tion of  four  years;  but  in  July,  1837,  appeared  the  long 
narrative  paper  called  Revolt  of  the  Tartars;  which  was 
followed  in  1838  by  Household  Wreck  and  Modern 
Greece,  and  in  1839  by  Casuistry  and  Dinner,  Meal  and 
Reputed.  The  year  1840  was  marked  by  the  production 
of  the  series  of  papers  entitled  The  Essenes,  the  articles 
entitled  Alleged  Plagiarisms  of  Coleridge  and  Modem 
Superstition,  and  the  series  on  Style  and  Rhetoric. 
» Meanwhile  De  Quincey  had  been  contributing  also  to 
Taitf  a  magazine  which  had  been  started  by  an  Edin- 


vm.]  "BLACKWOOD"  AND  "TATP."  91 

burgh  bookseller  in  1832  on  advanced  Whig  principles  in 
politics,  but  perfectly  open  and  unfettered  in  all  literary 
respects.  It  was  in  February,  1834,  just  at  the  time  of 
the  break  with  Blackwood  noted  above,  that  Tait  began 
to  astonish  its  readers  by  Sketches  of  Life  and  Manners 
from  the  Autobiography  of  an  English  Opium-eater. 
The  series  ran  on,  sometimes  with  explanatory  sub-titles, 
through  the  rest  of  1834  and  through  1835  and  1836; 
and,  even  after  the  connexion  with  Blackwood  was  re- 
sumed in  1837,  Tait  was  able  to  entertain  its  readers  for 
three  more  years  with  new  instalments  of  the  same.  The 
Sketches,  indeed,  extending  over  about  thirty  articles  in 
all,  contain  that  Autobiography  of  De  Quincey  the  repub- 
lished portions  of  which  in  the  English  edition  of  his 
Collected  Works  form,  together  with  the  Confessions^  the 
most  frequently  read  volumes  of  the  collection.  No  por- 
tions of  the  series  attracted  greater  attention  at  the  time, 
or  excited  more  wrath  in  certain  quarters,  than  the  digres- 
sions upon  the  recently  dead  Coleridge  and  the  still  liv- 
ing Wordsworth  and  Southey.  Carlyle  has  told  us  how 
South ey  in  particular,  when  he  first  met  him,  flamed  up 
on  the  mention  of  De  Quincey's  name,  averring  that  it 
would  be  but  a  proper  service  to  good-manners  if  some 
one  were  to  go  to  Edinburgh  and  thrash  the  little  wretch ; 
and  we  hear  elsewhere  of  the  offence  taken  also  by  the 
Wordsworths  and  by  members  of  the  Coleridge  family. 
Yet,  as  Carlyle  seems  to  have  thought,  the  complaints 
were  excessive.  The  amount  of  personal  gossip  in  the 
papers  was  much  less  than  we  have  been  accustomed  to 
since;  the  "vivisection,"  what  little  there  was  of  it,  was 
avowedly  for  scientific  purposes;  and  no  one  could  deny 
the  generosity  of  the  general  estimates.     The  admiration 

expressed  for  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  all  in  all,  indeed, 
32 


92  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

went  beyond  what  the  world  even  then  was  willing  to  ac- 
cord ;  and  it  may  be  doubted  whether  we  have  yet  in  our 
literature  any  more  interesting  accounts  of  the  philoso- 
pher and  the  poet  than  those  admiring,  but  sharp-sighted, 
papers.  They  and  the  rest  of  the  articles  in  the  same 
series  were,  at  all  events,  most  acceptable  when  they  ap- 
peared in  the  pages  of  Tait.  There  were,  however,  con- 
tributions of  an  independent  kind  to  the  same  pages, 
the  most  important  being  A  Tory's  Account  of  Toryism, 
Whiggism,  and  Radicalism,  in  1835  and  1836.  The  av- 
erage amount  of  De  Quincey's  contributions  to  the  two 
magazines  jointly  through  the  ten  years  was  about  six 
articles  every  year.  During  the  same  period  he  wrote  the 
articles  Goethe,  Pope,  ShaJcspeare,  and  Schiller,  for  the 
seventh  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  edited  by 
Mr.  Macvey  Napier ;  and  there  may  have  been  other  con- 
tributions to  minor  periodicals.  Moreover,  during  the 
same  period  he  had  produced  one  of  the  only  two  speci- 
mens of  his  powers  given  to  the  world  originally  in  the 
book  form.  This  was  his  Klosterheim,  or  the  Masque,  a 
romance,  published  by  Blackwood,  in  a  duodecimo  vol- 
ume, in  1832. 

De  Quincey's  domestic  life  in  Edinburgh  through  a 
period  of  such  marked  literary  industry  is  involved  in 
considerable  obscurity.  We  learn  incidentally  that  he  was 
a  guest  in  Wilson's  house  in  Gloucester  Place  for  some 
time  continuously  in  1830-31 ;  we  hear  of  a  largish  fur- 
nished house  or  set  of  apartments  in  Great  King  Street 
taken  by  him  for  himself  and  his  family  in  1831 ;  and  we 
hear  further  that  there  were  removals  to  Forres  Street,  still 
in  the  New  Town,  and  to  the  village  of  Duddingston,  an 
outskirt  of  the  Old  Town,  at  the  back  of  Arthur  Seat. 
Perhaps  there  were  other  shiftings  and  burrowings.     In 


Tin.]  DOMESTIC  LIFE  IN  EDINBURGH.  98 

general,  all  that  is  clear  is  that  there  was  a  succession  of 
domiciles,  with  always  one  room  in  each  where,  amidst  a 
chaos  of  books  and  papers  on  the  floor,  chairs,  and  tables, 
the  indefatigable  little  scholar  could  pursue  his  studies, 
penning  his  articles  one  after  another,  in  his  peculiarly 
neat,  small  hand,  on  the  little  bit  of  space  kept  free  for 
the  purpose  on  the  table  at  which  he  principally  sat.  For 
additional  particulars  we  are  indebted  to  the  recollections 
of  one  of  his  daughters  and  to  some  of  the  preserved  fam- 
ily letters.  They  present  De  Quincey  to  us  very  touch- 
ingly  in  some  of  his  family  relations.  The  gentlest  of 
human  beings,  incapable  of  a  word  that  could  wound  the 
feelings  of  any  one  near  him,  and  indeed  morbidly  hum- 
ble and  deferential  in  his  style  of  address  to  persons  of 
every  rank,  though  the  uniform  ornateness  of  his  English 
caused  a  kind  of  awe  of  him  among  Scottish  servants,  he 
watched  his  children  and  moved  among  them  with  a 
doting  attention,  in  which  there  was  much  of  the  edify- 
ing, while  there  was  nothing  of  the  authoritative.  They 
grew  up  in  a  kind  of  wondering  regard  for  their  father 
and  his  ways,  insensibly  imbibing  refinement  from  the  lit- 
tle atmosphere  of  high  tastes  which,  with  whatever  appur- 
tenances of  disorder  and  discomfort,  his  bookish  and  stu- 
dious habits  kept  around  them,  and  receiving  an  education 
of  no  ordinary  kind  from  his  supervision  of  their  lessons 
and  his  discursive  fireside  talk.  The  earliest  recollections 
of  the  daughter  who  has  been  mentioned  were  of  evenings 
when,  to  still  her  crying  in  the  nursery,  her  father  would 
fetch  her  in  his  arms  into  his  own  warm  room,  place  her 
in  a  chair  for  the  supreme  delight  of  "sitting  up  with 
papa,"  and,  after  petting  her  with  sips  of  well  -  sugared 
coffee,  give  her  a  book  and  paper  -  cutter  with  which  to 
amuse  herself  while  he  went  on  with  his  writing.    He  in- 


94  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

stnicted  her,  she  remembered,  even  thus  early,  in  the  art 
of  cutting  the  leaves  of  books  without  making  ragged 
edges.  Of  his  eldest  son,  William,  he  was  the  sole  tutor, 
bestowing  on  the  task  of  his  education  all  that  "  care  and 
hourly  companionship"  could  do,  and  with  such  effect 
that  the  boy  could  show,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  in  proof  of 
his  scholarship,  "  not  merely  an  Etonian  skill  in  the  man- 
agement of  Greek  metres,"  but  also  an  original  commenta- 
ry on  Suetonius.  Of  the  opium-eating,  meanwhile,  all  we 
know  is  that,  though  found  indispensable,  it  had  been,  for 
the  most  part,  brought  within  bounds. 

Three  family  bereavements  fell  with  heavy  effect  amid 
the  occupations  and  changes  of  residence  of  those  ten 
years.  The  first  was  the  death  by  fever,  in  1833,  of  De 
Quincey's  youngest  son,  Julius,  in  the  fifth  year  of  his  age. 
The  next  was  the  death,  in  1835,  at  the  age  of  not  quite 
eighteen,  of  the  above-mentioned  eldest  son,  William — 
"  my  first-bom  child,  the  crown  and  glory  of  my  life,"  as 
the  poor  father  wrote  afterwards.  Then,  in  1837,  came 
the  death  of  the  wife  and  mother  herself,  the  poor  Mar- 
garet Simpson  from  Grasmere,  whose  lot  it  had  been  to 
marry  this  strange  man  of  genius  one-and-twenty  years 
before,  and  to  accompany  him  thus  far.  One  can  suppose 
that  hers  had  not  been  the  easiest  or  the  happiest  of  lives. 
"Delicate  health  and  family  cares,"  says  her  daughter, 
"  made  her  early  withdraw  from  society  ;  but  she  seems  to 
have  had  a  powerful  fascination  for  the  few  friends  she 
admitted  to  her  intimacy."  One  of  these  used  to  tell  the 
daughters  that  he  had  "never  seen  a  more  gracious  or  a 
more  beautiful  lady ;"  and  it  was  a  standing  form  of  re- 
buke to  them  by  an  old  Scotch  charwoman,  who  had  been 
much  in  the  house,  and  continued  to  usurp  some  dominion 
over  them,  that  none  of  them  would  ever  be  the  brave 


vni.]  DEATH  OF  HIS  WIFE.  96 

woman  that  their  mother  was.  That  is  all  we  know  of 
the  dalesman's  daughter  from  Grasmere,  who  died  among 
alien  folk  in  Edinburgh  at  the  age  of  about  thirty-nine, 
save  that  they  buried  her  in  the  West  Church- yard,  or 
Church -yard  of  St.  Cuthbert's,  beside  the  children  that 
had  gone  before  her. 

There  can  hardly  have  been  a  more  helpless  widower- 
hood  than  that  of  De  Quincey,  left  in  his  fifty-second  year 
with  six  children,  the  eldest  a  girl  yet  in  her  teens.  For 
two  or  three  years  our  vision  of  him  and  his  in  their  do- 
mestic conditions  in  Edinburgh  is  an  absolute  blur,  save 
that  we  learn  that  in  1838  he  took  a  lodging  for  himself 
at  No.  42  Lothian  Street,  that  he  might  have  a  separate 
place  for  his  books  and  literary  labours.  But  necessity 
had  developed  a  beautiful  power  of  prudence  and  self-help 
among  the  orphans ;  and  the  eldest  girl,  Margaret,  and  the 
next  to  her  in  age,  Horace,  putting  their  young  heads  to- 
gether, struck  out  a  plan.  With  their  father's  consent, 
they  took  a  cottage  called  Mavis  Bush,  near  Lasswade, 
about  seven  miles  out  of  Edinburgh,  where  they  and  the 
four  younger  ones  could  live  more  quietly  and  economical- 
ly than  in  the  town,  and  to  which  their  father  could  re- 
treat when  he  wanted  retirement.  This  was  in  1840; 
from  which  date,  on  through  all  the  rest  of  De  Quincey's 
life,  the  cottage  at  Lasswade  is  to  be  conceived  as  his 
chief  abode,  though  without  prejudice  to  the  possibility 
of  other  refuges  and  camping -grounds,  as  the  whim  oc- 
curred to  himj  in  Edinburgh  or  elsewhere. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

tASSWADB    AND    EDINBURGH,    WITH    VISITS    TO    GLASGOW: 
MORE    CONTRIBUTIONS   TO    "  BLACKWOOD  "    AND    "  TAIT." 

[1840-1849.] 

The  name  "  The  Cottage  at  Lasswade  "  is  somewhat  mis- 
leading. Lasswade  is  a  village  of  some  extent,  reached 
most  directly  from  Edinburgh  by  the  road  through  the 
suburb  called  Newington  and  thence  over  the  heights  of 
Liberton  and  Liberton  church,  and  is  situated  very  prettily 
and  picturesquely  on  the  river  Esk,  at  a  point  where  that 
river  has  just  left  the  still  more  picturesque  and  celebrated 
beauties  of  Hawthornden  and  the  glen  of  Roslin.  But 
Mavis  Bush  Cottage,  now  styled  in  the  County  Directory 
"  De  Quincey  Villa,"  is  not  in  Lasswade,  but  about  a  mile 
and  a  half  beyond  it,  near  the  foot  of  a  by-road  which 
descends,  by  a  steep  and  winding  declivity,  to  that  hollow 
of  the  Esk  which  contains  Polton  Mills  and  the  small  Pol- 
ton  railway-station.  Though  too  deep-sunk  in  the  hollow 
for  much  cheerfulness  of  immediate  outlook,  it  is  a  snug 
enough  little  cottage,  with  its  face  direct  to  the  road  and 
its  bit  of  garden  -  ground  behind,  and  with  a  few  other 
houses  about  it,  above  or  beneath,  on  the  same  slope.  The 
country  round  is  beautifully  hilly,  with  varied  and  pleasant 
walks,  especially  pathways  by  the  sides  of  the  river  or  up 
and  down  its  overhanging  and  well-wooded  banks.  The 
interior  of  the  cottage,  when  lit  up  in  the  evenings,  must 


CHAP.EE.]  THE  COTTAGE  AT  LASSWADE.  97 

have  been  invitingly  cosy  in  its  plain  elegance  in  the  days 
when  it  was  De  Quincey's.  *'  Our  dwelling,"  he  writes  to 
Miss  Mitford  in  1842,  "is  a  little  cottage,  containing  eight 
rooms  only,  one  of  which  (the  largest),  on  what  is  called 
in  London  the  first  floor,  is  used  as  a  drawing-room,  and 
one,  about  half  the  size,  on  the  ground-floor,  as  a  dining- 
room,  but  for  a  party  of  ten  people  at  most."  He  goes  on 
to  explain  that  there  were  two  servants,  and  that  commu- 
nication with  the  post-oflBce  at  Lasswade  was  intermittent 
and  difficult. 

For  the  present  we  are  concerned  only  with  the  first 
nine  years  of  De  Quincey's  tenancy  of  this  cottage  at 
Lasswade  or  Polton,  i.  e.,  with  the  period  between  1840 
and  1849,  bringing  him  from  his  fifty-sixth  year  to  his 
sixty -fifth.  And,  first  of  all,  as  has  been  already  stipu- 
lated, the  conception  of  him  as  located  at  Lasswade  dur- 
ing those  nine  years  has  to  be  corrected  by  the  fact  that 
he  was  there  only  when  he  chose.  Freak,  or  the  supposed 
necessities  of  his  literary  work,  occasioned  pretty  frequent 
removals  from  Lasswade  to  lodgings  in  Edinburgh  and 
elsewhere.  How  many  different  rooms  in  various  places 
he  thus  occupied  in  the  course  of  the  nine  years  no  one 
has  ascertained ;  but,  as  each  in  turn  was  "  snowed  up  " 
by  an  accumulation  of  the  books  and  papers  he  was  using 
for  the  time,  and  as,  in  his  morbid  terror  lest  these  should 
be  lost,  it  was  usual  for  him,  in  leaving  any  lodging,  to 
entrust  the  accumulated  deposit  to  the  landlady,  he  is 
known  to  have  had  sometimes  the  rents  of  "  at  least  four 
separate  sets  of  lodgings"  all  running  on  simultaneously. 
It  may  be  well  to  collect  the  particulars  of  his  movements, 
from  Lasswade  and  back  to  it,  through  the  nine  years,  so 
far  as  the  records  will  serve. 

"While  most  of  those  with  whom  he  had  relations  were 
5* 


98  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

in  Edinburgh,  there  was  an  attraction  also  to  Glasgow  in 
an  acquaintanceship  he  had  formed  with  two  of  the  Pro- 
fessors of  Glasgow  University.  These  were  Mr.  J.  P. 
Nichol,  Professor  of  Astronomy,  a  man  of  fine  genius,  and 
the  modest  and  scholarly  Mr.  E.  L.  Lushington,  Professor 
of  Greek.  Accordingly,  for  perhaps  the  greater  part  of 
the  two  years  from  March,  1841,  to  June,  1843,  De  Quincey 
was  in  Glasgow  as  the  guest  of  one  or  the  other  of  these 
two  friends,  or  in  lodgings  beside  them.  His  first  Glas- 
gow lodgings  were  in  the  High  Street,  opposite  to  the  Old 
College ;  but  they  were  exchanged  for  rooms  at  79  Ren- 
field  Street.  These  last  were  retained  and  paid  for  until 
as  late  as  1847.  From  his  return  from  Glasgow  in  June, 
1843,  he  seems,  with  the  exception  of  a  plunge  now  and 
then  into  some  unascertainable  lodging  in  Edinburgh,  to 
have  resided  steadily  at  Lasswade.  And  not  without  rea- 
son. His  eldest  son,  Hora6e,  having  gone  into  the  army 
as  an  oflBcer  in  the  26th  Cameronians,  had  died  in  China, 
of  malarious  fever,  in  the  end  of  1842,  after  having  served 
in  the  Chinese  campaign  under  Sir  Hugh  Gough;  his 
third  son,  Paul  Frederick,  had  gone  out  to  India  as  an 
oflScer  in  the  VOth  Queen's  Regiment ;  and  his  second  son, 
Francis,  was  in  Manchester  for  the  time,  as  clerk  in  a  com- 
mercial house.  The  three  daughters  being  thus  all  of  the 
family  left  at  Lasswade,  De  Quincey  was  bound  to  be  with 
them  as  much  as  possible.  Nothing  can  be  prettier  than 
his  account  to  Miss  Mitford  of  their  life  there  together 
and  his  description  of  his  daughters.  "They  live,"  he 
says,  "in  the  most  absolute  harmony  I  have  ever  witness- 
ed. Such  a  sound  as  that  of  dissension  in  any  shade  or 
degree  I  have  not  once  heard  issuing  from  their  lips. 
And  it  gladdens  me  beyond  measure  that  all  day  long  I 
hear  from  their  little  drawing-room  intermitting  sounds  of 


IX.]  LASSWADE,  EDINBURGH,  AND  GLASGOW.  99 

gaiety  and  laughter,  the  most  natural  and  spontaneous. 
Three  sisters  more  entirely  loving  to  each  other,  and  more 
unafiEectedly  drawing  their  daily  pleasures  from  sources 
that  will  always  continue  to  lie  in  their  power,  viz.,  books 
and  music,  I  have  not  either  known  or  heard  of."  So 
through  1844,  1845,  and  1846,  but  with  the  variation 
caused  in  the  household  by  the  return,  in  1845,  of  the 
son  Francis  from  Manchester,  to  exchange  his  prospects  in 
commerce  for  the  study  of  medicine  at  the  University  of 
Edinburgh.  The  exchange  was  not  without  its  diflBcul- 
ties,  for  the  young  man  had  to  walk  from  Lasswade  to 
Edinburgh  every  day  to  attend  the  classes;  but  it  gave 
De  Quincey  the  pleasant  additional  occupation  of  inquir- 
ing into  his  son's  progress  and  coaching  him  for  some  of 
his  examinations.  Then  there  were  pleasant  acquaintance- 
ships with  some  of  the  Lasswade  neighbours,  with  drives 
now  and  then  of  the  father  and  daughters  to  town  to- 
gether, and  the  still  more  frequent  reception  of  friends 
and  admirers  of  De  Quincey  who  made  their  way  to  Lass- 
wade to  pay  him  their  respects.  In  1847  there  was  an- 
other long  absence  in  Glasgow,  extending  from  January  to 
October.  During  part  of  the  time  his  daughters  were  on 
a  visit,  the  first  in  their  lives,  to  their  father's  surviving 
relatives  in  the  West  of  England ;  and  some  letters  of  his 
show  a  lively  interest  in  their  reported  movements  amid 
the  scenes  and  persons  that  had  been  so  familiar  to  him- 
self in  his  earlier  days,  and  a  special  pleasure  in  the  fact 
that  they  had  met  Mr.  Walter  Savage  Landor.  Through 
1848  and  1849  all  the  family  were  together  again  at  Lass- 
wade, with  no  other  break  in  the  routine  there  than  might 
be  caused  by  De  Quincey's  incurable  passion  for  hiding  him- 
self at  his  option  now  and  then  in  some  Edinburgh  lodging. 
An  important  matter  all  this  while,  as  in  every  pre- 


100  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

ceding  period  of  De  Quincey's  existence,  had  been  the 
state  of  his  health.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  the  ma- 
jority of  those  interested  in  him  have  had  any  adequate 
conception  of  that  extreme  fragility  of  body,  that  com- 
plexity of  bodily  pains  and  ailments,  with  which,  even 
apart  from  the  opium,  he  had  to  contend  all  his  life. 
Connected  with  his  main  malady — that  malady  into  which 
all  his  inherited  or  acquired  ailments  had  coalesced  and 
settled  from  an  early  stage  of  his  youth,  and  which  the 
medical  authorities  are  disposed  to  define  as  "gastro- 
dynia,"  or  severe  gastric  neuralgia,  accompanied  by  "a  low, 
inflammatory  condition  of  the  mucous  coat  of  the  stom- 
ach, proceeding  at  times  to  ulceration  " — there  was  a  spe- 
cific inability  to  live  by  the  ordinary  forms  of  nutriment. 
His  teeth  had  gone;  he  "did  not  know  what  it  was  to 
eat  a  dinner;"  his  message  in  1847  to  an  old  school-fel- 
low, by  way  of  jocular  apology  for  never  having  renewed 
their  old  acquaintance  by  letter,  was  that  he  had  not  once 
dined  "since  shaking  hands  with  him  in  the  eighteenth 
century."  A  little  soup,  tea,  cocoa,  coffee,  or  other  fluid, 
with  a  sop  of  bread,  or  more  rarely  an  inch  or  two  of 
mutton  or  hare,  kept  to  the  extreme  of  tenderness,  and 
cut  finically  for  easy  mastication,  formed  De  Quincey's 
diet.  In  the  management  even  of  this  there  was  inces- 
sant cause  of  nervous  irritation.  Add  the  glooms  and 
phrenzies  growing  out  of  the  indulgence  in  opium  to 
which  he  had  so  long  been  habituated.  In  this  matter 
there  had  been  ups  and  downs  within  our  present  period, 
according  to  the  varying  degrees  of  his  suffering  from  his 
independent  malady,  but  also  according  to  the  fluctuations 
of  his  reasonings  for  and  against  the  drug.  The  chief 
crisis,  marked  as  such  by  De  Quincey  himself  in  a  kind 
of  diary  of  notes  and  jottings  at  the  time,  had  been  in  the 


IX.]         "BLACKWOOD"  AND  "TAIT"  CONTINUED.         101 

year  1844.  In  some  new  access  of  accumulated  wretch- 
edness, mental  and  physical,  when  a  horror  of  the  most 
hideous  blackness  seemed  once  more  to  be  "travelling 
over  the  disc  of  his  life,"  he  had  rioted  again  with  the 
fiend  and  exulted  in  5000  daily  drops  of  the  liquid  dam> 
nation.  The  rebound  towards  self-retrieval,  as  it  is  chron- 
icled in  his  jottings,  had  cost  him  efforts  incredible.  He 
had  experimented  in  reductions  of  the  dose,  and  even  in 
the  torture  of  total  abstinence ;  and,  his  feet  having  fail- 
ed him  for  his  ordinary  pedestrian  exercise  in  the  roada 
between  Lasswade  and  Edinburgh,  he  had  compelled  him- 
self to  shuffle  round  and  round  the  garden  of  his  Lass- 
wade cottage  in  a  measured  circuit  of  forty-four  yards,  so 
as  to  accomplish  in  that  way  his  ten  miles  a  day.  Un- 
expectedly, these  efforts  had  succeeded ;  and,  with  an  al- 
lowance ranging  from  100  drops  a  day  upwards,  he  had 
recovered  in  1844  the  faculty  of  living  on.  In  1848  there 
had  been  another  crisis,  but  less  formidable ;  and  from 
that  date,  we  are  given  to  understand,  his  wrestlings  with 
opium  were  at  an  end.  Having  ascertained  the  very 
minimum  of  the  drug  on  which  existence  was  endurable 
in  his  own  case,  he  kept  to  that  as  much  as  possible 
through  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  saw  no  use  in  troubling 
himself  with  further  experimentation. 

De  Quincey's  literary  labours  during  the  nine  years 
had  still  been  chiefly  in  contributions  to  Blackwood  and 
Tail.  To  Blackwood  his  chief  contributions  had  been 
as  follows:  In  1841,  The  Secret  Societies  of  Asia,  Plato's 
Hepublic,  Traits  and  Tendencies  of  German  Literature  (?), 
Homer  and  the  Homeridce  (three  parts) ;  in  1842,  Philoso- 
phy of  Herodotus,  The  Pagan  Oracles,  Cicero,  Bicardo 
Made  Easy  (three  parts),  Benjamin  of  Tudela  (?) ;  in 
1844,  Greece  under  the  Romans;  in  1845,  Coleridge  and 


102  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Opium-eating  and  Suspiria  de  Pro/undis,  being  a  Sequel 
to  the  Confessions  of  an  Opium-eater  (three  successive 
articles,  with  sub-titles) ;  and,  in  1 849,  The  English  Mail- 
coach  and  The  Vision  of  Sudden  Death.  To  Tait  there 
seem  to  have  been  no  contributions  between  1841  and 
1845;  but  in  this  latter  year  the  series  in  that  magazine 
was  renewed  in  an  article  on  Wordsworth's  Poetry,  fol- 
lowed by  another  On  the  Temperance  Movement,  and  by 
several  papers  under  the  general  title  of  Notes  on  Gil- 
Jillan's  Gallery  of  Literary  Portraits.  These  last,  treating 
of  Godwin,  Hazlitt,  Shelley,  Keats,  &c.,  were  continued 
into  1846 — in  which  year  also  appeared  two  papers  on 
The  Antigone  of  Sophocles,  occasioned  by  a  dramatic  per- 
formance at  Edinburgh  by  Miss  Helen  Faucit;  two  on 
Christianity  Considered  as  an  Organ  of  Political  Move- 
ment, one  entitled  Glance  at  the  Works  of  Mackintosh, 
and  one  entitled  System  of  the  Heavens  as  Revealed  by 
Jjord  Mosse's  Telescope.  To  these  succeeded,  in  1847, 
UTotes  on  Walter  Savage  Landor,  Joan  of  Arc  (two  pa- 
pers), Schlosser's  Literary  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, Milton  versus  Southey  and  Landor,  Orthographic 
Mutineers,  The  Spanish  Military  Nun  (three  papers),  and 
two  papers  on  Protestantism,  completed  by  a  third  in 
February,  1848.  When  we  add  that  De  Quincey  had 
some  connexion  during  a  portion  of  the  nine  years  with 
a  Glasgow  newspaper,  and  that  his  Logic  of  Political 
Economy  (now  included  in  his  Collected  Works)  was 
first  published  in  separate  book -form  by  Messrs  Black- 
wood in  1844,  it  will  be  seen  that  his  literary  industry 
through  the  period  had  continued  very  vigorous  indeed. 
Through  the  greater  part  of  the  nine  years  the  chief  stim- 
ulus, as  before,  had  been  actual  need  of  money;  but, 
towards  the  end  of  the  period  there  had  been  a  consider- 


IX.]  HIS  EDINBURGH  ECCENTRICITIES.  108 

able  abatement  of  the  urgency  of  this  particular  motive 
by  the  falling  in  of  legacies  from  his  uncle,  his  mother, 
or  other  relatives.  Particulars  are  not  given ;  but  one  in- 
fers, from  hints  in  the  published  family  letters,  that  the 
year  1847  was  a  marked  turning-point  of  relief  for  the 
brain-worn  veteran  in  this  respect. 

The  brain-worn  veteran!  The  phrase  does  not  imply 
that  there  were  yet  any  signs  in  him  of  mental  decrepi- 
tude. On  the  contrary,  as  the  titles  of  some  of  the  arti- 
cles in  the  last  paragraph  will  have  suggested,  the  sexa» 
genarian  De  Quincey  was  still  in  full  perfection  of  his  won- 
derful powers.  Whatever  might  have  been  the  case  seven* 
teen  years  before,  when  he  first  settled  permanently  in 
Edinburgh,  it  would  have  been  no  wonder  now  if  the  com- 
munity of  that  city  had  learnt  to  think  of  him  as  one  of 
the  few  worthiest  among  them  digito  monstrari  as  he  pass- 
ed in  their  streets.  It  had  not  come  quite  to  that  length 
in  De  Quincey's  case — the  peculiar  nature  of  his  celebrity 
not  making  him  liable  to  any  such  rush  of  popular  and 
daylight  recognition  as  gathered  round  Wilson  or  Chal- 
mers, but  coupling  him  rather  with  such  a  similar  recluse 
and  late  burner  of  the  lamp  as  the  philosophic  Hamilton. 
Still,  for  all  in  Edinburgh  who  had  any  special  passion  for 
literature,  or  thought  they  had,  De  Quincey  from  1845  on- 
wards was  most  emphatically  one  of  the  "  characters  "  of 
the  place.  He  was  talked  of  and  gossiped  about  at  din- 
ner-tables and  tea-tables,  and  to  see  him,  even  by  strata- 
gem, was  worth  an  effort.  As  it  was  the  chance  of  the 
present  writer  to  be  in  the  vicinity  for  a  part  of  the  pre- 
cise time  mentioned  (from  December,  1844,  to  May,  184V), 
he  will  here  set  down,  as  authentically  as  he  can,  first  what 
he  then  heard,  and  next  what  trifle  he  saw,  of  the  little 
local  wonder. 


104  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

The  rumours  about  De  Quincey  were  invariably  to  the 
eflEect  that  his  eccentricity,  his  difference  from  other  mor- 
tals, passed  all  bounds  of  belief  or  conception.  The  form 
of  his  eccentricity  generally  reported  first  was  the  absolute 
uncertainty  of  his  whereabouts  at  that  particular  time, 
arising  from  his  evasiveness  on  the  subject  of  his  lodgings 
when  he  was  last  seen,  or  intimation  from  him  that,  having 
changed  his  lodgings,  he  was  in  the  distressing  predicament 
of  having  an  adversary  in  pursuit  of  him  in  the  shape  of 
a  former  landlady.  This  suspiciousness  of  being  pursued 
had  become  an  ingrained  habit  of  De  Quincey's  mind,  and 
accounted  for  much  of  his  conduct.  It  connected  itself 
with  his  astounding  incompetence  in  money  matters.  In 
that  department  of  practice  the  abstract  political  econo- 
mist, so  profound  in  Ricardo,  was  helpless  as  an  infant. 
He  gave  away  money  right  and  left  when  he  had  it,  and 
was  then  the  prince  of  almoners  for  sorners  and  beggars ; 
but  he  was  constantly  running  aground  himself.  The  re- 
ports of  him  in  this  respect  agreed  pretty  uniformly  in 
the  idea  that  his  diflBculties  did  not  necessarily  arise  from 
want  of  money,  but  only,  or  often,  from  want  of  a  partic- 
ular sum  required  at  a  particular  moment,  and  inability  in 
all  ordinary  processes  for  converting  the  potential  into  the 
actual.  Mr.  Hill  Burton  gives  an  Edinburgh  illustration 
of  about  our  present  date  which  reminds  one  of  Mr. 
Charles  Knight's  story  of  the  bank-draft  in  London  in  the 
year  1825.  One  night  very  late,  he  tells  us,  De  Quincey, 
arriving  at  a  friend's  door,  and  having  obtained  admission 
with  diflBculty,  explained,  with  all  the  skill  and  pathos  of 
his  beautiful  rhetoric,  that  it  was  absolutely  essential  he 
should  be  provided  at  once  with  Is.  6d.  On  perceiving 
surprise  on  his  friend's  face,  he  proceeded  to  explain  that 
he  had  a  document  in  his  possession  the  transference  of 


n.]  HIS  EDDmURGH  ECCENTRICITIES.  106 

which  to  his  friend's  care  would  probably  obviate  his  hes- 
itation ;  and  then,  after  rummaging  in  his  pockets,  and 
fetching  a  miscellany  of  small  articles  out  of  them,  he 
produced  at  last  a  crumpled  piece  of  paper,  which  he  ten- 
dered as  security.  It  was  a  501.  note ;  and  his  friend's 
impression  was  that,  if  he  had  kept  the  note  in  exchange 
for  the  Is.  6d.,  he  would  have  heard  no  more  of  the  trans- 
action, and  indeed  that,  before  coming  to  his  door,  De 
Quincey  had  been  trying  to  negotiate  the  exchange  at  a 
series  of  shops,  and  had  failed  only  through  extreme  scep- 
ticism on  the  part  of  the  shopkeepers.  From  these  re- 
ports of  the  mysteriousness  of  De  Quincey's  usual  where- 
abouts, and  his  tendency  to  come  to  light  only  occasionally 
in  the  straits  of  some  dilemma,  it  was  a  natural  inference 
that  a  meeting  with  him  in  any  ordinary  social  way  was 
not  a  matter  of  easy  arrangement.  A  promise  from  him, 
you  were  told,  was  of  no  use  :  the  party  might  meet,  expect- 
ing him ;  but,  ten  to  one,  De  Quincey  would  not  be  there. 
There  was,  however,  a  science  of  the  ways  and  means  of 
getting  at  De  Quincey ;  in  which  science,  according  to 
experts,  the  method  of  surest  efficacy  was  to  commission 
some  one  to  find  him  out  and  bring  him.  Then,  if  pre- 
caution made  escape  impossible,  he  would  come  meekly 
and  unresistingly.  But  in  what  guise  would  he  come? 
What  a  question  for  endless  speculation  this  was  may  be 
guessed  from  Mr.  Hill  Burton's  account  of  his  appearance 
at  one  important  dinner-party,  to  which  he  had  been  lured 
by  such  deep-laid  pretences  that  he  came  without  convoy. 
"  The  festivities  of  the  afternoon  are  far  on  when  a  com- 
motion is  heard  in  the  hall  as  if  some  dog  or  other  stray 
animal  had  forced  his  way  in.  The  instinct  of  a  friend- 
ly guest  tells  him  of  the  arrival :  he  opens  the  door  and 

fetches  in  the  little  stranger.     What  can  it  be  ?    A  street- 
H 


106  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

boy  of  some  sort  ?  His  costume,  in  fact,  is  a  boy's  duffle 
great-coat,  very  threadbare,  with  a  hole  in  it,  and  buttoned 
tight  to  the  chin,  where  it  meets  the  fragments  of  a  parti- 
coloured belcher  handkerchief ;  on  his  feet  are  list  shoes, 
covered  with  snow,  for  it  is  a  stormy  winter  night;  and 
the  trousers ! — some  one  suggests  that  they  are  mere  linen 
garments  blackened  with  writing-ink,  but  that  Papaverius 
never  would  have  been  at  the  trouble  so  to  disguise  them. 
What  can  be  the  theory  of  such  a  costume  ?  The  simplest 
thing  in  the  world — it  consisted  of  the  fragments  of  ap- 
parel nearest  at  hand.  Had  chance  thrown  to  him  a  court 
single-breasted  coat,  with  a  bishop's  apron,  a  kilt,  and  top- 
boots,  in  these  he  would  have  made  his  entry."  Dressed 
in  whatever  fashion,  he  was  still  De  Quincey,  and  you 
were  glad  to  have  him.  For  as  to  the  magic  of  his  talk, 
its  sweet  and  subtle  ripple  of  anecdote  and  suggestion,  its 
witching  splendour  when  he  rose  to  his  highest,  the  reports 
were  unanimous  and  enthusiastic.  No  conceivable  intel- 
lectual treat,  you  were  told,  was  equal  to  a  fortunate  even- 
ing with  De  Quincey.  Only,  you  were  pretty  sure  to  hear, 
there  might  be  one  drawback.  Whether  from  the  stimu- 
lus of  opium  or  not,  he  was  apt  to  be  at  his  best  when  it 
was  rapidly  becoming  to-morrow  and  his  companions  had  to 
think  of  going.  Having  got  your  De  Quincey,  you  might 
thus  find  yourself  face  to  face  with  the  problem  how  to 
get  rid  of  him.  Generally  it  solved  itself  by  his  going  at 
last  with  the  rest,  steering  himself  no  one  knew  whither 
through  the  starlight  or  darkness;  but  sometimes,  you 
were  told,  on  polite  inducement,  he  would  remain  where 
he  was,  and  then  the  visit  of  an  evening  might  extend 
itself  to  unknown  dimensions. 

Such  were  the  reports  one  heard  about  De  Quincey  be- 
fore seeing  him.    My  own  few  glimpses  of  him,  I  am  bound 


IX.]  A  PERSONAL  REMINISCENCE.  107 

to  add,  did  not  present  him  to  me  in  any  such  extreme  of 
helplessness  as  the  reports  had  prepared  me  to  expect. 
Here  are  the  facts,  as  I  have  already  printed  them  else- 
where :  "  The  first  time  I  saw  De  Quincey  was  most  pleas- 
antly one  evening  in  a  room  high  up  in  one  of  the  tall 
houses  of  the  Old  Town.  He  came  in  charge  of  a  strong, 
determined  man,  who  took  all  the  necessary  trouble.  There 
were  but  few  present,  and  all  went  on  nicely.  In  addition 
to  the  general  impression  of  diminutiveness  and  fragility, 
one  was  struck  with  the  peculiar  beauty  of  his  head  and 
forehead,  rising  disproportionately  high  over  his  small, 
wrinkly  visage  and  gentle,  deep -set  eyes.  In  his  talk, 
which  was  in  the  form  of  really  harmonious  and  consider- 
ate colloquy,  and  not  at  all  in  that  of  monologue,  I  remem- 
ber chiefly  two  incidents.  The  birthday  of  some  one  pres- 
ent having  been  mentioned,  De  Quincey  immediately  said, 
'  Oh,  that  is  the  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  So-and-so ;'  and 
he  seemed  ready  to  catch  as  many  birthdays  as  might  be 
thrown  him  on  the  spot,  and  almanac  them  all  round  in  a 
similar  manner  from  his  memory.  The  other  incident 
was  his  use  of  a  phrase  very  beautiful  in  itself,  and  which 
seemed  characteristic  of  his  manner  of  thinking.  Describ- 
ing some  visionary  scene  or  other,  he  spoke  of  it  as  con- 
sisting of  *  discs  of  light  and  interspaces  of  gloom ;'  and  I 
noticed  that,  with  all  the  fine  distinctness  of  the  phrase, 
both  optical  and  musical,  it  came  from  him  with  no  sort 
of  consciousness  of  its  being  out  of  the  way  in  talk,  and 
with  no  reference  whatever  to  its  being  appreciated  or  not 
by  those  around  him,  but  simply  because,  whoever  might 
be  listening,  he  would  be  thinking  as  De  Quincey.  That 
evening  passed ;  and,  though  I  saw  him  once  or  twice 
again,  it  is  the  last  sight  of  him  that  I  remember  next 
best.  It  must  have  been,  I  think,  in  1846,  on  a  summer 
33 


108  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

afternoon.  A  friend,  a  stranger  in  Edinburgh,  was  walking 
with  me  in  one  of  the  pleasant,  quiet  country  lanes  near  the 
town.  Meeting  us,  and  the  sole  moving  thing  in  the  lane 
besides  ourselves,  came  a  small  figure,  not  untidily  dressed, 
but  with  his  hat  pushed  up  far  in  front  over  his  forehead, 
and  hanging  on  his  hind-head,  so  that  the  back  rim  must 
have  been  resting  on  his  coat-colJar.  At  a  little  distance 
I  recognised  it  to  be  De  Quincey ;  but,  not  considering 
myself  entitled  to  interrupt  his  meditations,  I  only  whis- 
pered the  information  to  my  friend,  that  he  might  not 
miss  what  the  look  at  such  a  celebrity  was  worth.  So  we 
passed  him,  giving  him  the  wall.  Not  unnaturally,  how- 
ever, after  he  passed,  we  turned  round  for  the  pleasure  of 
a  back  view  of  the  wee  intellectual  wizard.  Whether  my 
whisper  and  our  glances  had  alarmed  him,  as  a  ticket-of- 
leave  man  might  be  rendered  uneasy  in  his  solitary  walk 
by  the  scrutiny  of  two  passing  strangers,  or  whether  he 
had  some  recollection  of  me  (which  was  likely  enough,  as 
he  seemed  to  forget  nothing),  I  do  not  know;  but  we 
found  that  he  too  had  stopped  and  was  looking  round  at 
us.  Apparently  scared  at  being  caught  doing  so,  he  im- 
mediately wheeled  round  again  and  hurried  his  pace  to- 
wards a  side-turning  from  the  lane,  into  which  he  disap- 
peared, his  hat  still  hanging  on  the  back  of  his  head.  That 
was  my  last  sight  of  De  Quincey." 

Those  walks  of  De  Quincey  in  the  environs  of  Edin- 
burgh ought  to  linger  still  among  the  memories  of  the  le- 
gend-loving town.  The  particular  walk  just  mentioned 
was  in  daylight,  and  the  meeting  was  in  the  quiet  lane  or 
road  by  which,  avoiding  the  great  Dean  Road,  one  wends 
towards  the  Corstorphines  and  Craigcrook.  Jeffrey  was 
then  alive,  and  resident  at  Craigcrook ;  but  it  is  quite  im- 
possible that  De  Quincey  had  been  calling  on  Jeffrey.    His 


a.]  HIS  RAMBLES  ABOUT  EDINBURGH.  109 

walks  were  in  all  directions,  for  his  own  purposes  of  exer- 
cise or  recreation  only,  and  at  his  own  sweet  will.  By 
preference  also,  and  in  the  proportion  of  many  to  one,  the 
longest  of  them  were  nocturnal.  It  is  strange  yet  to  think 
of  the  little  figure  in  those  weary  wanderings  of  his  round 
and  through  the  city  evening  after  evening,  now  on  his 
way  from  Lasswade  inwards  over  the  darkening  heights 
and  hollows  to  the  Old  Town,  now  along  the  glittering 
chasm  of  Princes  Street  or  the  gloomier  regularity  of 
George  Street,  now  down  by  the  northern  suburbs  to  the 
levels  of  the  Firth  at  Granton,  now  by  a  daring  meander 
eastwards  to  the  deserted  ghastliness  of  Leith  Pier  and  the 
skeleton  array  of  masts  and  shipping,  and  always,  or  often, 
with  the  penance  of  the  returning  zigzag  somehow  to 
Lasswade  and  the  cottage  on  the  Esk.  It  was  his  custom, 
we  are  told,  in  these  nocturnal  rambles,  and  chiefly  for  his 
convenience  in  certain  intricate  labyrinths  of  pathway 
about  the  Esk,  with  a  foot-bridge  or  two  in  them,  to  carry 
a  small  lantern,  with  the  means  of  lighting  it  when  he 
chose.  What  a  trial  to  the  nerves  of  the  hardiest  belated 
tramp,  or  other  night-bird,  with  any  dread  of  the  super- 
natural, to  have  come  upon  De  Quincey  in  such  a  spot, 
striking  his  match  by  a  bush,  or  advancing  through  the 
trees  with  his  bull's-eye !  He  himself  was  perfectly  fear- 
less of  night-bird  or  demon.  Night  was  his  natural  ele- 
ment; what  could  it  bring  forth  that  should  alarm  him? 
Sometimes,  we  are  informed,  though  without  production 
of  the  evidence,  he  would  not  care  to  return  home  at  all, 
but  would  lie  down  for  rest  and  shelter  anywhere.  Edin- 
burgh, therefore,  in  preserving  her  legends  about  the  De 
Quincey  who  honoured  her  with  so  much  of  his  life,  has 
to  remember,  it  seems,  unless  rumour  has  been  too  inven- 
tive, that  not  only  were  his  footsteps  familiar  with  every 


110  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

mile  of  road  round  her,  but  sometimes  he  would  bivouac 
in  a  wayside  wood  in  her  neighbourhood,  or  on  a  spur  of 
the  Braids  or  the  Pentlands,  canopied  only  by  the  constel- 
lations. 

The  danger  is  that,  in  dwelling  so  much  on  the  eccen- 
tricities of  De  Quincey,  it  should  be  forgotten  that  all  the 
while  the  cottage  at  Lasswade  was  really  his  home.  It 
was  there  that  he  would  have  been  detained  always  by 
those  dearest  to  him ;  and  it  was  there,  in  fact,  with  all 
allowance  for  his  wanderings  and  f ugitations,  that  he  did 
spend  most  of  his  time.  Very  soon,  if  left  to  himself,  he 
would  have  taken  possession  of  every  room  in  the  house, 
one  after  another,  and  '*  snowed  up  "  each  with  his  papers ; 
but,  that  having  been  gently  prevented,  he  had  one  room  to 
work  in  all  day  and  all  night  to  his  heart's  content.  The 
evenings,  or  the  intervals  between  his  daily  working-time 
and  his  nightly  working-time  or  stroll,  he  generally  spent 
in  the  drawing-room  with  his  daughters,  either  alone  or  in 
company  with  any  friends  that  chanced  to  be  with  him. 
At  such  times,  we  are  told,  he  was  unusually  charming. 
"  The  newspaper  was  brought  out,  and  he,  telling  in  his 
own  delightful  way,  rather  than  reading,  the  news,  would, 
on  questions  from  this  one  or  that  one  of  the  party,  often 
including  young  friends  of  his  children,  neighbours,  or  vis- 
itors from  distant  places,  illuminate  the  subject  with  such 
a  wealth  of  memories,  of  old  stories,  of  past  or  present  ex- 
periences, of  humour,  of  suggestion,  even  of  prophecy,  as 
by  its  very  wealth  makes  it  impossible  to  give  any  taste  of 
it."  The  description  is  by  one  of  his  daughters ;  and  she 
adds  a  touch  which  is  inimitable  in  its  fidelity  and  tender- 
ness. "  He  was  not,"  she  says,  "  a  re-assuring  man  for 
nervous  people  to  live  with,  as  those  nights  were  excep- 
tions on  which  he  did  not  set  something  on  fire,  the  com- 


IX.]  EVENINGS  AT  LASSWADE.  Ill 

monest  incident  being  for  some  one  to  look  up  from  book 
or  work  to  say  casually,  Papa,  your  hair  is  on  fire;  of 
which  a  calm  Is  it,  my  love  ?  and  a  hand  rubbing  out  the 
blaze  was  all  the  notice  taken."  The  music,  which  was  so 
frequently  a  part  of  those  in-door  pleasures,  and  the  varia- 
tions of  the  character  of  the  evenings  now  and  then  by 
the  presence  of  distinguished  visitors,  British  or  American, 
may  easily  be  imagined.  What  has  chiefly  to  be  borne  in 
mind,  we  repeat,  is  that,  at  the  centre  of  all  De  Qulncers 
Bohemian  roamings,  real  and  reputed,  there  was  this  home 
of  warmth  and  comfort  for  him  on  the  banks  of  the  Esk, 
and  that  it  may  be  seen  by  those  who  feel  an  interest  in 
him  to  this  day.  The  quickest  way  is  to  take  the  rail 
from  Edinburgh  to  the  Polton  station ;  but  the  best  is  to 
go  to  Lasswade,  and  thence  to  walk  the  mile  and  a  hall 
extra  that  bring  one  to  the  spot 


CHAPTER  X. 

LASSWADE,  AND  NO.  42  LOTHIAN  STREET,  EDINBURGH. THE 

COLLECTED    WORKS. — LAST   DAYS    OF   DE    QUINCEY. 

Ll  849-1 859.] 

In  1845  there  had  been  started,  by  Mr.  James  Hogg,  an 
enterprising  Edinburgh  bookseller,  a  new  cheap  periodical, 
called  Hogg's  Weekly  Instructor.  The  periodical  had  been 
going  on  for  three  years,  and  had  entered  on  a  "  new 
series"  in  1848.  It  was  in  the  autumn  of  1849,  when 
some  accident  had  caused  the  removal  of  the  printing- 
offices  to  temporary  premises  in  the  suburb  of  Edinburgh 
called  Canonmills,  that  Mr.  Hogg,  attending  to  some  mat- 
ters there,  was  told  that  a  stranger  wanted  to  speak  to 
him.  "  Going  down,"  says  Mr.  Hogg,  "  I  was  confronted 
by  a  noticeably  small  figure,  attired  in  a  capacious  gar- 
ment, which  was  much  too  large,  and  which  served  the 
purpose  of  both  undercoat  and  overcoat."  It  was,  in  fact, 
De  Quincey,  who  had  come  to  offer  an  article  for  the  In- 
structor. Mr.  Hogg,  having  ascertained  who  his  visitor 
was,  very  naturally  accepted  the  article  at  once ;  where- 
upon it  was  produced  from  an  inner  pocket  of  the  capa- 
cious great-coat,  and  handed  to  Mr.  Hogg,  but  not  till  De 
Quincey  had  produced  from  the  same  pocket  a  small  hand- 
brush  and  carefully  brushed  the  manuscript.  Finding  he 
had  come  all  the  way  from  Lasswade,  Mr.  Hogg  asked  him 
how  he  was  to  get  back.     He  would  walk,  as  usual,  be 


CHAP.x]  CONNEXION  WITH  MR.  HOGG.  113 

said.     It  was  now  about  six  o^clock,  and  he  would  be 
home  before  nine. 

This  call  on  Mr.  Hogg  at  CanonmUls  turned  out  of  no 
small  importance  in  De  Quincey's  biography.  Whether 
it  had  been  occasioned  by  any  knowledge  on  De  Quincey's 
part  that  his  connexion  with  Blackwood  and  Tait  was  com- 
ing to  an  end,  or  merely  by  a  wish  to  have  a  weekly  pe- 
riodical also  at  hand  for  the  reception  of  smaller  odds  and 
ends  from  his  pen,  certain  it  is  that  from  1849  the  new 
connexion  all  but  superseded  every  other.  There  are  no 
known  contributons  by  De  Quincey  to  Blackwood  after 
1849.  His  only  known  contribution  to  Tait  after  that 
date  was  a  paper  in  three  instalments,  in  1851,  entitled 
Lord  Carlisle  on  Pope;  and,  though  The  North  British 
Review  is  said  to  have  counted  De  Quincey  among  its  con- 
tributors, his  literary  exertions  in  any  such  quarter  were 
but  asides  from  his  occupations  for  Mr.  Hogg.  Not,  of 
course,  that  these  occupations  consisted  in  mere  contribu- 
torship  to  Hogg's  Instructor.  That  periodical — whether 
under  its  original  name,  which  it  retained  till  1856,  or  un- 
der the  more  appalling  name  of  Titan,  which  it  adopted 
in  1857 — did  indeed  receive  bright  occasional  contribu- 
tions from  De  Quincey.  The  most  notable  were  a  short 
sketch  of  Professor  Wilson,  in  1850 ;  an  article  on  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  in  three  portions,  in  1852  ;  a  paper  on 
California,  in  1852;  and  one  on  China,  in  1867.  But 
what  were  a  few  stray  articles  in  an  Edinburgh  weekly  for 
the  last  ten  years  of  such  a  life  as  De  Quincey's?  How 
had  it  come  to  pass,  in  fact,  that  a  man  for  whose  articles 
all  editors  and  all  publishers  in  the  British  Islands,  had 
they  been  really  deep  in  their  craft,  ought  to  have  been 
competing,  had  found  it  necessary,  in  his  sixty-fifth  year, 
to  pay  that  call  at  Canon  mills  with  a  manuscript  in  his 
6 


Hi  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

pocket,  and  solicit,  almost  as  a  mendicant,  the  acceptance 
of  it  for  the  columns  of  a  struggling  Edinburgh  weekly  ? 
That  mystery  resolves  itself  into  the  more  general  mystery 
of  the  origin  of  stupidity ;  but  the  call  at  Canonmills  had 
at  least  one  result  more  fortunate  than  the  opening  for  De 
Quincey  of  another  small  source  of  wages  by  periodical- 
writing  in  his  old  age.  Mr.  Hogg,  having  to  see  his  new 
contributor  again  and  again,  conceived  a  possible  expan- 
sion of  their  connexion.  Why  should  he  not  bring  out, 
under  De  Quincey's  own  editorial  supervision,  a  collective 
edition  of  De  Quincey's  Works?  True,  it  had  been  an- 
nounced that  the  scheme  had  been  already  entertained  in 
some  quarters  and  given  up  as  hopeless ;  true,  it  was  the 
uniform  representation  to  Mr.  Hogg  by  his  brothers  in  busi- 
ness that,  if  he  did  begin  the  enterprise  with  De  Quin- 
cey's consent,  it  would  break  down  after  a  volume  or  two, 
through  De  Quincey's  unpunctuality  and  incapacity  for 
continuous  labour.  "  I  will  risk  it,"  said  Mr.  Hogg  to  him- 
self;  and  he  did.  It  seems  to  have  been  in  1850  that  the 
resolution  was  taken,  though  the  preparations  were  not 
begun  till  some  time  later. 

Meanwhile  the  same  idea  had  occurred  to  the  American 
publishing  firm  of  Messrs.  Ticknor  &  Fields,  of  Boston. 
In  America,  almost  always  in  advance  of  the  mother-coun- 
try in  such  matters,  it  had  been  perceived  long  ago  that 
De  Quincey  was  one  of  the  chief  English  classics.  There 
had  been  popular  American  reprints  already  of  individual 
pieces  of  his ;  and  it  was  Mr.  Fields  himself  that  now  un- 
dertook the  task  of  seeking  out  his  scattered  articles  in 
British  periodicals  and  collecting  and  arranging  them  in 
proper  form.  For  this  first  American  edition  of  De  Quin- 
cey's works — begun  in  1851,  and  completed  in  1855,  in 
twenty  volumes — the  publishers  obtained  some  assistance 


X.]  THE  COLLECTED  WORKS.  115 

from  De  Quincey  while  it  was  in  progress;  and  it  is  re- 
membered to  their  credit  that  they  made  him  a  partici- 
pator in  the  profits  to  a  handsome  extent.  The  Boston 
edition  of  the  works,  however,  was  not  to  interfere  with 
Mr.  Hogg's  projected  Edinburgh  edition ;  which,  indeed, 
was  to  differ  from  the  Boston  edition  very  considerably. 
Less  complete  in  some  respects,  inasmuch  as  De  Quincey 
was  to  omit  from  it  articles  that  are  kept  in  the  Boston 
edition,  and  was  to  diminish  the  bulk  of  the  matter  on 
certain  subjects  by  fusing  separate  articles  in  some  cases 
into  one,  it  was,  on  the  other  hand,  to  be  more  perfect,  in 
so  far  as  it  was  to  receive  the  author's  own  revision  through- 
out, with  modifications  and  extensions  in  the  course  of  the 
revision. 

To  get  rid  of  that  matter  at  once,  it  may  be  stated  that 
when  the  first  volume  of  the  Edinburgh  edition  did  ap- 
pear in  1853,  it  appeared  as  the  first  volume  of  a  series 
the  general  title  of  which  was  to  be  Selections  Grave  and 
Oay^from  writings  published  and  unpublished,  by  Thomas 
De  Quincey,  and  that  this  general  title  was  maintained  till 
the  issue  of  the  fourteenth  volume  of  the  series  (the  last 
to  which  it  was  carried  by  Mr.  Hogg)  in  1860.  On  the 
whole,  it  is  to  be  regretted  now  that  De  Quincey  did  not, 
for  this  edition,  simply  collect  his  writiogs,  and  publish 
them  in  the  chronological  order  of  their  first  appearance 
or  their  composition,  with  a  note  of  date  and  place  to 
each.  Next  best  would  have  been  an  assortment  of  the 
papers  into  sets  of  volumes  according  to  a  classification  of 
their  subjects.  No  one  was  more  capable  of  such  a  classi- 
fication than  De  Quincey ;  but,  unfortunately,  he  had  no 
complete  preserved  collection  of  his  printed  papers  by 
him,  or  of  the  periodicals  containing  them.  The  Ameri' 
can  edition,  coming  over  to  him  in  successive  volumes, 


116  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

was  his  greatest  help ;  but,  till  it  was  complete,  and  some- 
times even  then,  he  had  to  rummage  for  his  old  papers, 
or  employ  Mr.  Hogg  to  rummage  for  him,  hurriedly  squeez- 
ing together  what  was  readiest  at  intervals,  to  make  up  a 
volume  when  the  press  became  ravenous.  Hence  the  most 
provoking  jumble  in  the  contents  of  the  fourteen  volumes 
— mixed  kinds  of  matter  in  the  same  volume,  and  disper- 
sion of  the  same  kinds  of  matter  over  volumes  wide  apart, 
and  yet  all  with  a  pretence  of  grouping  and  with  facti' 
tious  sub-titles  invented  for  the  separate  volumes  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment.  Much  of  this  has  been  remedied  in 
the  later  issues  of  the  same  Edinburgh  edition  by  Messrs. 
A.  &  C.  Black,  who  acquired  the  property  in  1862.  Two 
volumes  have  been  added  by  Messrs.  Black  to  the  previous 
fourteen,  and  other  alterations  have  been  made  by  them, 
justifying  the  exchange  of  the  title  Selections  Grave  and 
Gay,  &c.,  for  the  more  comprehensive  title  De  Quincey's 
Works. 

The  new  labour  of  bringing  out  the  Collected  Works 
occasioned  a  change  in  De  Quincey's  domiciliary  arrange- 
ments. It  may  be  remembered  that  from  1838  to  1840, 
or  just  after  his  wife's  death  and  before  the  happy  notion 
of  the  cottage  at  Lasswade,  his  Edinburgh  lodging  or 
working  head-quarters  had  been  at  No.  42  Lothian  Street. 
There  seems  reason  for  believing  that,  though  he  had  been 
in  a  variety  of  lodging-places  in  the  interval,  he  had  al- 
ways preferred  this.  At  all  events,  in  1852,  when  he  was 
in  the  throes  of  the  first  volume  of  the  Collected  Works, 
there  was  a  return  to  No.  42  Lothian  Street,  and  this  time, 
as  it  turned  out,  for  so  permanent  a  tenancy  that  no  house 
in  Edinburgh  now  can  compete  with  that  in  the  interest 
of  its  associations  with  De  Quincey. 

Lothian  Street,  the  stranger  to  Edinburgh  may  be  in- 


x.}  No.  42  LOTHIAN  STREET.  117 

formed,  is  a  dense  street  of  shops  and  rather  dingy  houses, 
in  the  Old  Town,  close  to  the  University ;  and  No.  42, 
like  most  of  the  other  houses,  is  what  is  called  in  Edin- 
burgh **  a  common  stair."  In  other  words,  it  is  a  tene- 
ment entered  from  the  street  by  an  arched  passage,  from 
which  a  stone  staircase  ascends  to  the  several  half-flats 
into  which  the  whole  is  divided,  each  with  its  independent 
door  and  door-bell.  There  are  six  such  half-flats  above 
the  ground-floor;  and  that  in  which  De  Quincey  had  his 
rooms  was  the  left  half-flat  on  the  second  floor.  The  half- 
flat  was  then,  as  it  had  been  at  the  time  of  De  Quincey's 
first  familiarity  with  it,  in  the  occupation  of  a  widowed 
Mrs.  Wilson  and  her  sister,  Miss  Stark.  They  were  two 
most  worthy  persons,  who  had  come  to  have  some  appre- 
ciation of  the  extraordinary  character  of  their  lodger ;  and 
they  were  from  this  time  forward  to  take  the  most  exem- 
plary charge  of  him.  It  is  an  additional  satisfaction  to 
know  that,  soon  after  they  had  taken  charge  of  him,  and 
chiefly  by  Mr.  Hogg's  friendly  exertions,  he  was  disen- 
tangled from  all  his  supposed  perplexities  with  other  land- 
ladies and  lodging-house  keepers.  Mr.  Hogg's  statements 
on  this  point,  a  vital  one  in  De  Quincey's  biography,  are 
worth  remembering.  Having,  with  some  diflSculty,  ob- 
tained the  necessary  information  from  him,  and  permission 
to  act  in  his  name,  Mr.  Hogg  did  find  that  deposits  of  pa- 
pers had  been  left  by  him  in  various  places.  In  the  main, 
however,  he  found  that  De  Quincey's  dread  that  he  could 
be  pursued  on  account  of  claims  so  arising  was  a  mere  hal- 
lucination. Two  former  landladies  came  of  their  own  ac- 
cord, and  with  perfect  good -nature,  to  deliver  up  to  Mr. 
Hogg,  without  any  claim  whatever,  papers  of  the  strange 
little  gentleman  who  had  lodged  with  them;  in  a  third 
case,  where  a  claim  for  house-room  was  presented,  which 


118  BE  QUINCE Y.  [chap. 

troubled  De  Quincey  for  some  time,  it  was  so  clearly  ex- 
orbitant that  it  might  have  been  quashed  at  once  but  for 
De  Quincey's  anxiety  about  the  safety  of  his  papers ;  and 
the  most  flagrant  case  of  all  was  one  in  which  a  whole 
family  trafficked  on  their  possession  of  papers  of  De  Quin- 
cey's as  a  means  of  extorting  money  from  him,  though 
not  professing  that  he  owed  them  a  farthing.  They  play- 
ed on  his  fears  for  his  papers,  doling  them  out  in  parcels, 
and  sometimes  sending  him  "  bogus-packets,"  made  up  of 
anything;  they  pleaded  abject  poverty,  and  appealed  to 
his  pity;  and  at  least  once  they  got  up  a  death  in  the 
family  that  he  might  have  the  pleasure  of  contributing  to 
the  funeral  expenses.  The  note  sent  to  De  Quincey  on 
this  occasion,  and  forwarded  by  him  to  Mr.  Hogg,  is  a  cu- 
riosity. "  Mr.  De  Quincey,  sir,"  it  begins ;  "  in  accordance 
with  your  request  I  have  made  out  the  enclosed  items, 
money  for  which  I  would  want  for  my  mother's  funeral. 
She  is  to  be  buried  to-morrow,  and  would  like  things  set- 
tled as  early  as  possible  to-day."  Mr.  Hogg  having  taken 
the  wretches  in  hand,  they  were  brought  under  some  sort 
of  control ;  but  there  is  a  trace  of  trouble  from  them  to 
as  late  as  1855. — Two  more  of  Mr.  Hogg's  stories  about 
De  Quincey  relate  to  the  same  matter  of  his  ubiquitously- 
scattered  papers.  Once,  in  a  hotel  in  High  Street,  into 
which  he  had  taken  De  Quincey  for  refuge  and  a  basin  of 
soup  during  a  thunder-shower,  the  waiter,  after  looking  at 
De  Quincey,  said,  "  I  think,  sir,  I  have  a  bundle  of  papers 
which  you  left  here  some  time  ago ;"  and,  sure  enough,  a 
bundle  was  produced,  which  De  Quincey  had  left  there 
about  a  year  before.  Another  time,  having  gone  to  Glas- 
gow once  more  on  a  visit  to  Professor  Lushington,  and 
having  taken  two  tea-chests  of  papers  with  him,  he  had 
been  obliged,  by  some  refractoriness  on  the  part  of  the 


X.]  No.  42   LOTHIAN  STREET.  119 

porter,  to  leave  them  at  a  bookseller's  shop  on  their  way 
to  the  Professor's  house.  This  he  remembered  perfectly ; 
but,  as  he  had  taken  no  note  of  the  name  of  the  book- 
seller, or  the  number  of  the  shop,  or  even  of  the  name  of 
the  street,  Mr.  Hogg  found  him  quite  rueful  on  the  sub- 
ject after  his  return  to  Edinburgh.  A  letter  to  a  friend 
and  a  round  of  inquiries  among  the  Glasgow  booksellers 
made  all  right ;  and  Mr.  Hogg  had  the  pleasure  of  point- 
ing out  to  him  the  two  recovered  boxes  as  they  lay  in  his 
office,  and  asking  what  was  to  be  done  with  them.  "  Send 
them  to  Lothian  Street,"  was  the  answer;  and  thither 
they  were  accordingly  sent — an  addition  to  the  vast  ag- 
gregate of  books,  periodicals,  and  newspapers,  in  mounds 
on  the  floor  and  in  tiers  along  the  walls,  already  crammed 
into  his  rooms,  and  vexing  the  orderly  souls  of  Mrs.  Wil- 
son and  Miss  Stark. 

A  worrying,  and  yet  most  amusing,  business  it  was  for 
Mr.  Hogg  to  keep  De  Quincey,  in  those  rooms,  or  in  his 
occasional  adjournments  to  Lasswade,  to  his  great  task  of 
bringing  out,  with  due  punctuality,  the  successive  volumes 
of  his  Collected  Works.  It  was  one  long  struggle  between 
De  Quincey  and  the  printing-press.  A  message-boy,  named 
Roderick,  was  kept  always  ready  at  the  one  end,  to  be  shot 
to  Lothian  Street  or  Lasswade  for  copy  when  the  supply 
failed ;  at  the  other  end  was  De  Quincey  himself,  groaning 
and  working.  His  preserved  notes  to  Mr.  Hogg,  excusing 
his  failures  and  delays,  are  pathetically  characteristic. 
"  My  non-performances  after  circumstantial  notice  have 
been  so  many,"  he  says  in  one,  "that  I  can  hardly  hope 
for  any  credit  when  I  tell  you  that  on  Monday  I  shall  be 
in  Lothian  Street  with  the  MS.  all  ready  for  the  press." 
The  excuse  on  this  occasion  was  his  "  nervous  sufferings ;" 
but  another  time  it  is  trouble  about  some  unpaid  taxes, 


120  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

and  consequent  "  agitation  at  the  prospect  of  utter  ruin 
past  all  repair."  Again,  it  is  uncertainty  whether  certain 
papers  are  already  in  the  printer's  hands,  or  are  still  in 
his  own  possession,  with  a  desire  to  be  sure  on  the  point, 
so  as  to  be  saved,  if  possible,  "  a  process  of  stooping  "  in 
search  of  them,  from  which  he  could  "  hardly  recover  for  a 
fortnight."  Once  it  is  owing  to  "  lumbago ;"  once  to  his 
having  fallen  asleep  inopportunely ;  another  time  to  par- 
tial delirium  from  "  want  of  sleep  and  opium  combined ;" 
another  time  to  distraction  from  "having  been  up  and 
writing  all  night,"  with  the  addition,  "  I  have  just  set  fire 
to  my  hair."  Once  the  delay  is  due  to  *'a  process  of 
whitewashing  or  otherwise  cleaning  ceilings,  &c.,"  which 
has  been  going  on  in  the  house,  and  to  the  unfortunate 
fact  that  most  of  the  papers  needed  at  the  moment  "  had 
been  placed  within  a  set  of  drawers  against  which  is  now 
reared  the  whitewasher's  scaffolding;"  and  several  times 
it  is  owing  to  consideration  for  Miss  Stark,  who  is  not  in 
the  best  of  health,  and  has  too  much  to  do.  Miss  Stark, 
in  fact,  had  become  indispensable  to  him,  not  only  buying 
for  him  all  the  articles  he  wanted,  articles  of  apparel  in- 
cluded, but  also  receiving  and  returning  messages  for  him, 
and  sorting  and  numbering  his  slips  of  copy,  and  so  mi- 
nutely cognisant  of  his  daily  dealings  and  difficulties  with 
the  press  that  she  began  to  fancy  she  was  herself  a  kind 
of  literary  lady.'     It  is  curious  to  observe,  amid  all  this 

'  Miss  Stark  is  still  alive,  and  in  the  same  No.  42  Lothian  Street ; 
and  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  her,  and  hearing  her  talk  of 
De  Quincey,  in  the  very  rooms  which  he  occupied.  She  remembers 
that  he  usually  wrote  on  papers  which  he  held  in  his  left  hand,  near 
his  eyes,  and  not  at  a  table,  and  also  that  he  had  a  peculiar  way  of 
notching  each  slip  of  manuscript  when  he  had  done  with  it.  He  had 
a  secret  meaning  in  the  practice,  which  he  promised  to  tell  her ;  but 


X.]  No.  42  LOTHIAN  STREET.  121 

confusion,  the  indefatigable  and  painstaking  laboriousness 
of  the  little  workman,  his  fastidious  care  for  accuracy,  and 
his  delicate  regard  for  the  feelings  and  interests  of  other 
people.  His  notes  of  excuse  are  themselves  models  of  su- 
perfluous precision ;  and  his  instructions  to  the  composi- 
tors for  corrections  of  the  press  and  for  the  proper  reading 
of  his  manuscript  are  elaborately  over-cautious.  He  is 
unhappy  sometimes  at  the  thought  that  the  compositors, 
whose  time  is  their  fortune,  may  be  standing  idle  through 
his  fault;  and  once  he  is  miserable  till  he  has  explained 
to  Mr.  Hogg  by  two  letters  in  succession  that  the  boy 
Roderick  is  not  to  blame  for  a  certain  misunderstanding, 
but  had  delivered  his  message  with  Spartan  strictness. 
Nor,  in  the  long-run,  as  Mr.  Hogg  vouches,  did  De  Quincey 
fail  in  any  essential  of  his  undertaking.  In  the  accounts 
between  them  he  was  equally  scrupulous,  and  indeed  mor- 
bidly afraid  of  any  benefit  to  himself  by  a  casual  error. 
It  was  not  long  before  Mr.  Hogg  found  that  a  cheque 
made  him  uneasy,  and  that  he  would  always  rather  have 
a  little  cash  on  account.  From  another  source  we  learn 
that  he  did  not  like  the  greasy  Scotch  one-pound  notes, 
but  preferred  the  medallions  of  her  Majesty's  head  in  gold, 
silver,  or  copper. 

While  No.  42  Lothian  Street  was  De  Quincey's  es- 
tablished abode  and  workshop  from  1852  onwards,  it 
was  at  Lasswade,  as  before,  that  he  was  mainly  or  solely 
to  be  seen  by  visitors.  The  domestic  economy  there, 
however,  did  not  remain  unchanged.  In  1853  there  was 
the  first  break  in  the  household  by  the  marriage  of  his 
eldest  daughter,  Margaret,  to  Mr.  Robert  Craig,  the  son 
of  a  highly-respected  neighbour,  and  the  removal  of  the 

he  never  did.    She  does  not  remember  that  he  went  out  much  at 
nights,  or  indeed  during  the  day,  except  for  transit  to  Lasswade. 
I     6* 


122  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

married  pair  to  Ireland.  In  1854  the  two  younger 
daughters  were  away  from  Lasswade  for  some  time,  on 
a  visit  to  their  married  sister  in  her  new  home ;  and  in 
1855  the  elder  of  these,  Florence,  went  out  to  India,  to 
become  the  wife  of  Colonel  Baird  Smith,  an  Engineer  offi- 
cer of  high  distinction,  whose  name  and  services  are  still 
brilliant  in  our  Indian  annals.  As  by  that  time  the  medi- 
cal son,  Francis,  had  become  a  duly-qualified  physician  and 
gone  out  to  Brazil,  De  Quincey  seems  to  have  felt  some 
compunction  afterwards  in  leaving  his  single  remaining 
daughter,  Emily,  so  much  alone  at  Lasswade.  There  were 
pathetic  signs  of  this,  Mrs.  Baird  Smith  informs  us,  in 
the  increased  frequency  thenceforward  of  his  afEectionate 
notes  and  letters  from  Lothian  Street  to  Lasswade  when 
he  could  not  come  himself;  and  her  explanation  of  the 
whole  matter  is :  "  He  really  could  not  manage  his  work 
farther  from  the  press,  and  nothing  which  would  have 
been  natural  in  other  cases,  such  as  my  sister's  removing 
into  Edinburgh,  would  have  answered  with  him."  In- 
deed, though  Miss  De  Quincey's  most  natural  home  was 
still  the  pretty  place  on  the  Esk  to  which  she  had  been 
accustomed  from  her  childhood,  and  where,  rather  than  in 
Edinburgh,  she  had  pleasant  neighbourly  ties,  she  was  in- 
evitably absent  from  it  a  good  deal,  after  1865,  on  visits 
elsewhere,  more  especially  to  her  sister,  Mrs.  Craig,  in  Ire- 
land. In  one  such  visit,  in  the  autumn  of  1857,  De  Quin- 
cey himself  actually  accompanied  her — the  arrival  just 
then  of  his  youngest  son,  Paul  Frederick,  on  furlough 
from  his  regiment  in  India,  having  suggested  the  journey 
and  made  the  travelling  arrangements  easier.  Even  with 
such  an  escort,  it  was  something  of  an  adventure  for  De 
Quincey  in  his  seventy-third  year;  but  all  was  managed 
to  his  mind;  and  there  was  a  new  fund  of  delight  for 


X.]  No.  42  LOTHIAN  STREET.  123 

him  through  the  rest  of  his  life  in  the  fact  that  he  had 
made  out  this  visit  to  his  eldest  daughter  in  her  Irish 
home,  and  had  seen  the  two  little  ones  that  were  to  re- 
member him  as  their  grandfather.  From  that  date  there 
was  to  be  no  similar  interruption  of  his  usual  habits,  but 
only,  whenever  his  youngest  daughter  was  at  Lasswade, 
the  customary  alternation  between  the  familiar  cottage 
there  and  his  own  crib  in  Lothian  Street.  Even  after  he 
had  passed  his  seventieth  year  he  retained  so  much  of  his 
pedestrian  vigour  that  the  distance  of  seven  miles  between 
the  two  places  was  nothing  to  him  if  he  were  in  the 
humour,  and  younger  men  were  surprised  at  the  ease  with 
which  he  preceded  them  up  one  of  the  braes  of  the  Esk. 
Latterly,  however,  there  was  an  increasing  feebleness, 
bringing  his  rambles  more  and  more  within  bounds,  and 
sometimes  confining  him  to  his  Lothian  Street  rooms  for 
weeks  together.  A  tendency  to  somnambulism,  which 
showed  itself  now  and  then,  was  a  new  cause  of  trepida- 
tion on  his  account  to  Mrs.  Wilson  and  Miss  Stark,  already 
sufficiently  in  dread  of  nightly  accident  to  him  and  his 
papers  from  his  extreme  short-sightedness  and  perpetual 
contact  with  fire  and  lighted  candles.  On  the  other  hand, 
one  is  glad  to  find,  he  was  in  his  latter  years  compara- 
tively free  from  the  pains  and  miseries  of  his  constitu- 
tional malady.  The  testimony  to  this  fact  is  concurrent 
from  several  quarters ;  and  the  medical  hypothesis  now  is, 
that  the  "  lesion  of  the  stomach "  which  had  been  the 
prime  cause  of  his  sufferings,  and  the  explanation  of  his 
abnormal  consumption  of  opium,  had  somehow  begun  to 
heal  itself,  by  a  kind  of  natural  induration,  as  old  age 
came  on. 

The  De  Quincey  of  the  ten  years  from  1849  to  1869, 

the  De  Quincey  whose  voluminous  Collected  Works  were 
84 


124  DE  QUINCET.  [chap. 

appearing  simultaneously  in  a  Britisli  edition  and  an 
American  edition,  was  naturally  an  object  of  even  keener 
social  curiosity  than  the  De  Quincey  of  earlier  and  less 
rounded-off  celebrity.  He  was  thought  of  as  a  surviving 
chief  of  a  former  generation,  whom  one  must  make  haste 
to  see,  if  he  were  ever  to  be  seen  at  all.  For  the  Edin- 
burgh people  generally,  however,  to  see  De  Quincey  was 
no  more  easy  matter  now  than  it  had  been  before.  His 
elusiveness  of  all  ordinary  social  gatherings  had  increased 
rather  than  diminished ;  and  from  that  net-work  of  great 
dinner-parties  and  great  evening  assemblies  which  brings 
all  Edinburgh  together,  over  and  over  again,  every  season 
from  November  to  May,  he  was  still  allowed  to  escape  by 
a  unanimous  vote  in  favour  of  his  intractable  singularity. 
So  long  as  Wilson  lived,  it  was  never  the  fault  of  that 
heartiest  and  most  hospitable  of  men  if  he  lost  sight  of 
De  Quincey  for  any  considerable  while,  or  were  not  ap- 
plied to  first  for  any  act  of  friendship,  or  of  guardianship 
in  a  difficulty,  that  De  Quincey  might  need.  But  Wilson 
died  in  April,  1854,  at  the  age  of  sixty-nine,  leaving  his 
weaker-bodied  friend,  then  of  the  same  age,  to  live  on  for 
nearly  six  years  more  of  lingering  Edinburgh  indepen- 
dence. Among  friends  of  De  Quincey's  who  saw  most  of 
him  in  his  later  years,  before  Wilson's  death  or  after,  were 
Mr.  Robert  Chambers,  Mr.  Hill  Burton,  Mr.  Alexander 
Russel  of  the  Scotsman,  and  Mr.  J.  R.  Findlay.  Those 
were  still  the  days,  too,  of  the  pleasant  little  supper-parties 
of  Mrs.  Crowe  in  Darnaway  Street,  remembered  yet  by 
some,  and  certainly  by  the  present  writer,  as  among  the 
most  excellent  and  best-managed  things  of  the  kind  ever 
known  in  Edinburgh  or  elsewhere.  By  the  kindly  tact  of 
the  hostess,  one  was  always  sure  to  meet  at  her  table,  in 
the  easiest  and  friendliest  fashion,  from  half  a  dozen  to 


X.]  EDINBURGH  REMINISCENCES.  126 

ten  or  twelve  of  the  men  and  women  best  worth  knowing, 
on  literary  or  other  grounds,  among  the  residents  in  Ed- 
inburgh or  the  last  week's  arrivals.  As  I  write  there  rise 
up  in  my  memory  the  genial  old  Sir  William  Allan  and 
his  niece,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  George  Combe  (the  latter  a 
daughter  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  with  a  flash  of  her  mother's 
dramatic  power  in  her  at  unexpected  moments),  the  good 
Robert  Chambers,  Dr.  Samuel  Brown,  David  Scott,  Miss 
Rigby,  Mrs.  Stirling  of  Hill  Street,  the  American  Miss 
Cushman,  the  Italian  Ruffini,  and  the  Greek  Mousabines. 
That  is  a  mixed  recollection  from  1846  ;  and  it  must  have 
been  considerably  after  that  date,  as  I  calculate,  but  while 
some  of  those  named  may  have  been  still  among  the 
contubemales,  that  De  Quincey  was  first  drawn  into  the 
friendly  circle.  The  following  anecdote  of  one  of  his  ap- 
pearances there  is,  therefore,  only  at  second-hand :  To 
suit  some  of  the  gentlemen,  there  had  been  produced  on 
this  occasion,  by  special  grace  of  the  English  hostess, 
materials  for  the  savage  Scottish  observance  called  whisky- 
toddy.  In  those  days  the  orthodox  instrument  for  mix- 
ing the  ingredients  in  the  tumbler  and  conveying  them 
thence  to  the  glass  was  a  "  toddy-ladle,"  generally  of 
sUver,  but  preferably  of  wood.  Mrs.  Crowe  having  apolo- 
gized for  the  absence  of  those  articles  and  the  substitution 
of  mere  teaspoons,  De  Quincey's  politeness  was  moved  to 
hyperbole.  "  Oh,  don't  mention  it,  Mrs.  Crowe,"  he  said ; 
"  don't  mention  it ;  for,  if  there  is  one  thing  in  this  world 
that  I  abominate  more  than  any  other,  it  is  those  execra- 
ble toddy-ladles."  There  must  be  De  Quinceyana  a  thou- 
sand times  better  than  this  from  some  of  the  little  nodes 
in  Darnaway  Street  and  elsewhere  from  1849  onwards,  if 
one  could  get  at  them.  But  almost  all  De  Quincey's  fellow- 
guests  at  such  little  gatherings  are  gone,  as  well  as  himself. 


126  DE  QUINCE Y.  [chap. 

Any  rare  appearances,  such  as  have  been  noted,  of  De 
Quincey  at  the  table  of  an  Edinburgh  friend  between  1849 
and  1859  connect  themselves,  of  course,  with  the  Edin- 
burgh focus  of  his  little  ellipse — i.  e.,  with  Lothian  Street. 
The  more  formal  calls  of  visitors  from  a  distance,  British 
or  American,  were  still  almost  invariably  at  Lasswade,  and 
naturally  became  fewer  and  fewer  after  the  marriages  of 
two  of  his  daughters  and  the  absences  of  the  third  made 
his  own  occasions  for  being  there  less  frequent.  Miss 
Martineau  visited  him  in  1852,  while  all  his  daughters 
were  still  with  him.  She  went  away  charmed  by  the  ex- 
ceptionally sweet  audibility  of  his  voice  as  it  reached  her 
through  her  ear-trumpet,  and  she  lived  to  write  a  posthu- 
mous estimate  of  him,  which  might  have  been  written 
more  worthily.  Mr.  Fields,  his  American  publisher,  visited 
him  about  the  same  time,  and  could  not  afterwards  say 
enough  of  his  gentleness  and  courtesy  of  manner  and  the 
delights  of  his  conversation.  Another  American,  who  vis- 
ited him  in  1854,  transmits  an  anecdote  which  is  worth 
more  than  general  eulogium.  The  talk  at  the  table  had 
begun  to  veer  round  somehow  to  the  subject  of  Scotland 
and  the  Scotch,  when  De  Quincey,  as  if  waking  from  a 
reverie,  observed  to  the  visitors  that,  as  the  servant  who 
waited  was  a  Scotch  girl,  he  would  be  particularly  obliged 
if  they  would  reserve  anything  severe  they  had  to  say 
about  the  Scottish  religion  for  moments  when  she  should 
be  out  of  the  room.  By  far  the  best  account,  however,  of 
a  visit  to  De  Quincey  at  Lasswade  in  his  later  years  is  one 
by  the  Rev.  Francis  Jacox.  The  visit,  which  was  in  July, 
1852,  extended  over  some  days,  and  included  walks  with 
De  Quincey,  as  well  as  conversations  with  him  in  the  cot- 
tage. Impressed,  as  everybody  was,  with  De  Quincey's 
wonderful  courtesy,  the  "  sensitive  considerateness  "  of  his 


X]  REMINISCENCES  BY  MR.  JACOX.  127 

style  of  address  to  all  about  him,  Mr.  Jacox  was  particular- 
ly struck  by  the  absence  in  him  of  that  habit  of  mono- 
logue which  is  the  usual  fault  of  men  celebrated  for  con- 
versational power.  He  was  as  willing  to  listen  as  to  talk. 
Naturally,  however,  most  of  the  talk  was  left  to  him. 
There  were  times  of  torpor  or  dreaminess  when  he  seemed 
incapable  of  anything ;  but  a  cup  of  coffee,  or  some  less 
visible  stimulus,  would  rouse  him  like  magic.  Then  his 
talk  would  range  over  all  possible  topics,  from  the  gayest 
and  lightest  to  the  highest.  Mr.  Jacox  took  note  of  some 
of  his  judgments  in  literary  matters.  He  talked  most  af- 
fectionately of  Wilson,  who  was  then  broken  down  in 
health.  In  speaking  of  Sir  William  Hamilton  and  his 
metaphysics  his  strain  rose  to  nearly  its  highest  mood,  but 
with  a  reserve  on  behalf  of  the  later  thinker,  Ferrier,  as 
perhaps  the  subtler,  if  not  so  learned  and  comprehensive. 
He  had  read  Isaac  Taylor's  works,  but  did  not  care  much 
about  them.  With  Miss  Edgeworth's  novels  he  had  much 
fault  to  find ;  Dickens  he  praised  only  cum  grano,  but  pre- 
ferred unhesitatingly  to  Thackeray,  on  account  of  his 
more  genial  humanity ;  and  against  Thackeray's  merits, 
Mr.  Jacox  thought,  he  was  mulishly  obdurate.  He  would 
not  admire  Emerson  and  Hawthorne  to  the  proper  pitch, 
but  had  not  then  read  the  best  of  Hawthorne.  He  showed 
very  considerable  curiosity  about  Maurice  and  Kingsley, 
and  Christian  Socialism,  and  inquired  very  particularly 
about  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes  and  his  London  doings  and  em- 
ployments. He  said  that  music  was  a  necessity  of  his 
daily  life,  and  that,  if  he  ever  visited  London  again,  the 
Opera  would  be  his  principal  attraction.  For  the  theatres 
in  general  he  had  little  good  to  say,  and  declared  that  he 
could  hardly  conceive  of  a  performance  of  a  Shakspearian 
tragedy  that  should  be  other  than  a  profanation  in  his 


128  DE  QUINCE Y.  [chap, 

eyes ;  but  lie  spoke  with  cordial  admiration  of  Miss  Helen 
Faucit  as  he  had  seen  her  recently  in  Edinburgh  in  the 
part  of  Antigone.  When  such  conversations  with  De 
Quincey  were  out-of-doors,  in  the  country-roads  about  Lass- 
wade,  Mr.  Jacox  observed  that  they  were  always  beset  or 
followed  by  beggars,  and  that  De  Quincey  gave  something 
at  once  to  every  applicant,  and  always  deferentially  and 
with  apology.  The  last  walk  Mr.  Jacox  had  with  him  was 
in  seeing  him  so  far  on  his  way  back,  on  an  evening,  from 
Edinburgh  to  Lasswade.  While  they  were  in  Princes 
Street,  De  Quincey  showed  a  nervous  anxiety  lest  any 
gesture  of  himself  or  his  companion  should  be  construed 
by  a  cabman  as  an  offer  of  a  fare,  and  so  bring  him  off  the 
rank.  Some  horrible  experience  seemed  to  be  in  his  mind, 
and  he  expressed  his  dread  of  "  the  overbearing  brutahty 
of  those  men."  The  walk,  so  far  as  it  was  a  joint  concern, 
ended  at  a  point  in  the  Meadows,  where  De  Quincey  in- 
sisted that  Mr.  Jacox  should  turn  back.  Mr.  Jacox  then 
bade  him  farewell,  but  watched  his  receding  figure  as  it 
disappeared  up  the  lane,  called  Lovers'  Loan,  leading  from 
the  Meadows  to  the  rest  of  his  long  route  over  height  and 
hollow  to  Lasswade.  He  had  opened  a  book  of  Haw- 
thorne's, which  Mr.  Jacox  had  given  him,  and  was  read- 
ing it. 

What  more  is  to  be  known  about  De  Quincey  in  his 
last  years  is  to  be  derived  chiefly  from  those  letters  to  his 
daughters  which,  as  has  been  mentioned,  became  touching- 
ly  frequent  after  the  family  had  been  dispersed.  Mr.  Page 
has  been  able  to  publish  a  number  of  specimens,  and  they 
have  a  very  lively  interest.  It  cannot  be  said,  indeed,  that 
they  admit  us  much  to  that  "  inner  heart "  of  De  Quincey 
the  real  nature  of  which  so  puzzled  those  who  knew  him 
best.     With   all  his  startling   outside  eccentricities,  and 


x]  HIS  LAST  YEARS.  129 

even  the  glaring  candours  of  his  opium  confessions,  he 
remained  an  impenetrable  being.  Wilson  himself  could 
never  explain  him.  What  dark  little  core  of  a  soul  did 
his  eccentricities  conceal;  or  was  there  no  real  core  of 
moral  personality  at  all,  but  only  a  strange  bunch  or  con- 
formation of  sensitive  and  intellectual  nerves,  over  which 
the  phenomena  of  the  world  could  creep  with  the  certainty 
of  a  keen  response,  and  that  could  secrete  thoughts  and 
phantasies  ?  The  second  supposition  is  irreconcilable  with 
known  facts.  We  have  had  signs  already,  and  the  writ- 
ings furnish  more  in  abundance,  that  the  gentle,  timid, 
shrinking,  abnormally  sensitive  and  polite  little  man  was 
no  more  without  his  hard  little  bit  of  central  self  than 
other  people,  and  that  this  might  be  found  out  on  occa- 
sion. He  had  a  very  considerable  fund  of  prejudice,  tem- 
per, opinionativeness,  animosity,  pugnacity,  on  which  he 
could  draw  when  he  liked ;  and  sharp  enough  claws  could 
be  put  forth  from  underneath  the  velvet.  He  had  also, 
we  need  not  doubt,  his  deeper  hours  and  reveries  of  self- 
communing  when  De  Quinccy  was  alone  with  De  Quincey, 
and  more  came  out  and  was  discoursed  between  them  than 
friend  or  enemy  could  ever  know.  This  mystery  of  the 
real  De  Quincey,  however,  has  to  be  prosecuted  through 
the  whole  biography  and  by  means  of  the  sum  total  of  the 
materials,  and  receives  little  elucidation  from  the  private 
letters. 

But,  though  these  letters  tell  us  little  about  De  Quincey 
intrinsically  that  we  should  not  have  known  otherwise, 
they  let  us  see  some  traits  of  his  character  in  the  light 
of  a  peculiarly  pleasant  familiarity.  Their  fatherly  and 
grandfatherly  fondness  is  really  beautiful.  We  see  the 
old  man,  late  at  night,  in  Lothian  Street,  amid  his  books 
and  papers,  stopping  his  work  and  pushing  it  aside,  that 


130  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

he  may  shut  his  eyes  and  think  for  a  while  of  his  three 
girls,  and  of  the  little  Eva  and  Johnny  in  the  Irish  home 
of  one  of  them.  The  arrival  of  the  post  with  letters  from 
his  daughters  is  the  event  of  the  twenty-four  hours  within 
which  it  occurs,  and  he  likes  nothing  better  than  to  prattle 
back  to  them  by  the  next  post.  Here,  however,  his  diffi- 
culties, excuses,  and  explanations  are  often  comically  ab- 
surd. Now  he  fears  he  has  mislaid  the  letters  just  re- 
ceived ;  now  he  has  but  a  single  sheet  of  note-paper  left, 
or  has  to  write  on  a  sheet  of  wretchedly  coarse  note-paper 
from  a  packet  he  had  fortunately  bought  at  the  last  shop 
he  could  find  open  on  a  Saturday  night;  now — let  his 
daughters  exult  with  him! — he  has  "sprung  a  mine  of 
envelopes "  underneath  the  litter  on  his  table,  and  will  be 
at  ease  on  that  score  for  some  time.  Worst  of  all,  it  is 
quite  uncertain  whether  the  letter  he  is  writing  will  ever 
be  despatched ;  for  he  knows  he  has  written  one  already, 
which  he  cannot  now  find,  and  this  one  may  disappear  in 
like  fashion,  unless  fate  is  propitious.  When  a  letter  did 
emerge  from  such  throttling  chances  in  its  origin,  it  was 
pretty  sure  to  be  worth  receiving.  With  affectionate  mes- 
sages to  the  recipient  and  those  about  her,  there  might  be 
chat  about  the  progress  of  the  Collected  Edition  of  the 
Works,  or  about  some  incident  in  De  Quincey's  last  walk 
or  in  the  Lothian  Street  menage ;  but  in  most  cases  the 
letter  turned  itself  into  a  playful  little  dissertation,  a  la 
De  Quincey,  on  some  point  of  etymology  or  literature 
casually  suggested.  Once  there  was  a  minute  account  of 
a  dream  in  which  himself  and  two  of  his  daughters  were 
the  figures,  with  an  illustrative  diagram  to  assist  them  in 
conceiving  it  exactly.  That  De  Quincey  took*  no  ordinary 
interest  in  the  current  public  news  of  the  day  we  know 
independently ;  but  the  letters  furnish  additional  proofs. 


X]  HIS  LAST  TEARS.  131 

We  hear  in  them  of  second  editions  of  the  newspapers 
sent  out  for  when  anything  of  special  moment  was  going 
on ;  and  the  amount  of  attention  to  the  trial  of  Palmer  in 
1856  and  to  another  famous  case  in  1857  answers  to  what 
we  should  expect  from  the  author  of  the  essay  on  "Mur- 
der Considered  as  one  of  the  Fine  Arts."  Nothing,  how- 
ever, seems  to  have  interested  De  Quincey  so  much,  or 
roused  him  so  nearly  to  a  paroxysm  of  personal  excite- 
ment, as  the  Indian  Mutiny  of  1857-58.  The  fact  that 
his  daughter,  Mrs.  Baird  Smith,  and  his  son,  Paul  Freder- 
ick, were  then  in  India,  and  subsequently  his  pride  in  the 
share  which  fell  to  his  son-in-law,  Colonel  Baird  Smith,  in 
the  exertions  for  the  suppression  of  the  Mutiny,  brought 
the  tremendous  story  home  to  him,  and  made  the  impres- 
sion of  it  the  last  great  experience  of  his  life. 

Through  the  years  of  labour  over  the  edition  of  the 
Collected  Works  De  Quincey  had  been  amusing  himself 
with  fresh  literary  projects.  Mr.  Hogg,  after  noting  it  as 
one  of  the  peculiarities  of  his  conversation  that  sometimes 
he  would  propound  the  most  absurd  things,  and  maintain 
them  so  gravely  that  it  was  impossible  to  say  whether  he 
was  merely  quizzing  you  and  himself  or  might  not  be 
really  in  earnest,  applies  the  remark  especially  to  his  per- 
sistence in  bringing  forward  certain  schemes  of  publish- 
ing adventure.  While  some  of  these  alarmed  Mr.  Hogg 
by  threatening  interruption  to  the  main  labour,  there  was 
one  which  would  not  have  been  so  chimerical  in  itself  had 
time  been  left  for  it.  This  was  a  project  of  a  new  His- 
tory of  England  in  twelve  volumes.  After  he  was  seventy 
he  still  harped  on  the  project  to  Mr.  Hogg,  and  longed  for 
the  conclusion  of  the  Collective  Edition,  that  he  might 
begin  the  new  work.  He  could  finish  it,  he  thought,  in 
four  years. 


132  DE  QUmOEY.  [chap. 

The  autumn  of  1859  had  come,  and  the  thirteenth  vol- 
ume of  the  Collected  Works  had  been  issued,  and  the 
fourteenth  and  last  volume  was  all  but  ready  for  the 
press,  when  it  became  evident  that  De  Quincey's  work  in 
the  world  was  over.  His  life  had  gone  to  the  extreme 
extent  for  which  it  had  been  wound  up,  and  it  was  no 
definite  malady,  but  the  mere  weakness  of  old  age,  that 
made  him  take  to  his  bed.  His  youngest  daughter,  sum- 
moned from  Ireland,  where  she  had  been  on  a  visit  to  her 
sister,  found  him  too  feeble  to  bear  removal  to  Lasswade, 
and  remained  with  him  in  Lothian  Street.  Dr.  Warbur- 
ton  Begbie,  an  Edinburgh  physician  of  the  highest  celeb- 
rity of  that  day,  was  called  in  on  the  22d  of  October. 
He  visited  his  patient  latterly  twice  a  day,  finding  him 
sometimes  rallying  so  much  as  to  be  able  to  sit  up  or 
recline  on  a  sofa,  eager  about  what  was  in  the  day's  news- 
papers, and  trying  to  read  them  himself,  or  turning  over 
the  leaves  of  a  new  book.  The  perfect  tranquillity  of  the 
patient,  his  anxiety  not  to  give  trouble,  and  the  clearness 
with  which  he  discussed  the  medical  treatment  of  his  case 
and  the  action  of  the  remedies  employed,  especially  with 
reference  to  the  efEects  that  might  have  been  left  on 
his  constitution  by  opium,  impressed  Dr.  Begbie  great- 
ly. There  were,  however,  times  of  swooning  and  sleepy 
delirium,  from  which  he  seemed  to  awake  with  sur- 
prise. On  such  occasions  his  dreams  seemed  always  to 
be  of  children.  On  Sunday,  the  4th  of  December,  the  ap- 
proach of  death  was  so  manifest  that  it  was  thought  right 
to  telegraph  for  Mrs.  Craig,  the  only  other  of  his  children 
then  within  reach.  She  arrived  in  time  to  be  recognised 
and  welcomed ;  and  on  the  morning  of  Thursday,  the  8th 
of  December,  the  two  daughters  standing  by  the  bedside, 
and  the  physician  with  them,  De  Quincey  passed  away. 


X.]  LAST  ILLNESS  AND  DEATH.  133 

He  had  been  in  a  doze  for  some  hours ;  and,  as  it  had 
been  observed  that  in  his  waking  hours  since  the  begin- 
ning of  his  illness  he  had  reverted  much  to  the  incidents 
of  his  childhood  and  talked  especially  of  his  father,  re- 
gretting that  he  had  known  so  little  of  him,  so  in  this 
final  doze  his  mind  seemed  to  be  wandering  among  the 
same  old  memories.  "  My  dear,  dear  mother :  then  I  was 
greatly  mistaken,"  he  was  heard  to  murmur ;  and  his  very 
last  act  was  to  throw  up  his  arms  and  utter,  as  if  with  a 
cry  of  surprised  recognition,  "  Sister!  sister !  sister !"  The 
vision  seemed  to  be  that  of  his  sister  Elizabeth,  dead  near 
Manchester  seventy  years  before,  and  now  waiting  for  him 
on  the  banks  of  the  river. 

De  Quincey,  at  the  time  of  his  death,  was  seventy-four 
years  and  four  months  old.  There  were  obituary  notices 
in  the  newspapers,  but  not  nearly  so  numerous  or  loud 
and  elaborate  as  those  which  came  out  on  the  death  of 
Macaulay,  at  the  age  of  fifty-nine,  twenty  days  later  in  the 
same  month.  Nor  can  I  find  that  there  was  any  great  at- 
tendance at  De  Quincey's  funeral.  He  was  buried  in  the 
West  Church-yard  of  Edinburgh,  beside  his  wife  and  two 
of  their  children ;  and  on  a  tablet  on  a  rather  ruinous  part 
of  one  of  the  walls  of  that  church-yard,  at  the  end  of  the 
bustling  Princes  Street,  and  close  under  the  Castle  Rock, 
one  may  read  now  this  epitaph :  Sacred  to  the  Memory  of 
Thomas  De  Quincey,  who  was  born  at  Greenhay,  near 
Manchester,  August  \5th,  1785,  and  died  in  Edinburgh, 
December  8th,  1859,  and  of  Margaret,  his  wife,  who  died 
August  1th,  1837.  The  epitaph,  it  will  be  observed,  pre- 
serves the  blunder  of  most  of  the  biographers  as  to  the 
place  of  De  Quincey's  birth.  What  does  it  matter,  or  the 
poorness  altogether  of  the  monument  ?  Scott,  whose  mon- 
ument is  the  central  object  of  the  city,  and  the  finest  ever 


134  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap,  x 

reared  anywhere  in  the  world  to  a  man  of  letters,  was  a 
native  of  Edinburgh ;  Wilson,  the  noble  bronze  statue  of 
whom  attracts  the  eye  in  Princes  Street,  a  little  to  the 
west  of  the  Scott  monument,  was  an  Edinburgh  citizen 
by  adoption ;  De  Quincey,  through  three  -  fourths  of  his 
literary  life  belonging  by  accident  to  Edinburgh,  was  in 
no  sense  an  Edinburgh  man,  and  could  expect  no  corre- 
sponding posthumous  honours.  Not  one  in  two  thousand 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Edinburgh  at  this  moment  knows 
where  he  is  buried,  or  that  he  is  buried  in  Edinburgh  at 
all;  and  not  once  in  a  year  does  any  one  of  the  select 
hundred  who  may  be  aware  of  the  fact  and  the  place 
think  of  visiting  the  humble  grave.  Again,  what  does  it 
matter?  De  Quincey's  real  constituency  consists  of  all 
those,  anywhere  over  the  English-speaking  world,  who 
care  for  De  Quincey's  writings. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

DB    QUINCE y's    WRITINGS :    GENERAL    CHARACTERISTICS. 

One  obvious  distinction  of  De  Quincey  from  most  of  the 
otber  chiefs  of  English  literature  is,  that  the  writings  by 
which  he  holds  his  high  rank  consist  almost  entirely  of 
papers  contributed  to  periodicals.  Various  books  which 
he  projected  remained  projects  only;  and,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  his  Logic  of  Political  Economy,  now  included 
among  his  collected  works,  and  his  novel  called  Kloster- 
keim,  of  which  there  has  been  no  English  reprint,  all  the 
products  of  his  pen  during  the  forty  years  of  his  literary 
life  appeared  originally  in  the  pages  of  magazines  or  other 
serials.  Just  as  Shakspeare  may  be  described,  in  an  off- 
hand manner,  as  the  author  of  about  thirty-seven  plays, 
so  may  De  Quincey  be  said  to  have  taken  his  place  in  our 
literature  as  the  author  of  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
magazine  articles. 

Another  obvious  characteristic  of  De  Quincey's  writings 
is  their  extreme  multifariousness.  They  range  over  an 
extraordinary  extent  of  ground,  the  subjects  of  which  they 
principally  treat  being  themselves  of  the  most  diverse 
kinds,  while  their  illustrative  references  and  allusions 
shoot  through  a  perfect  wilderness  of  miscellaneous  schol- 
arship. This  multifariousness  of  his  matter  is,  in  fact,  but 
a  manifestation  of  that  peculiar  personal  character  which 
chanced  in  his  case  to  be  brought  into  the  business  of 


136  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

literature.  "  For  my  own  part,  without  breacli  of  truth 
or  modesty,"  he  says  in  one  place,  "  I  may  aflSrm  that 
my  life  has  been,  on  the  whole,  the  life  of  a  philosopher : 
from  my  birth,  I  was  made  an  intellectual  creature ;  and 
intellectual  in  the  highest  sense  my  pursuits  and  pleasures 
have  been,  even  from  my  school- boy  days."  Again,  in 
another  place,  he  says :  "  I  have  passed  more  of  my  life 
in  absolute  and  unmitigated  solitude,  voluntarily,  and  for 
intellectual  purposes,  than  any  person  of  my  age  whom  I 
have  ever  either  met  with,  heard  of,  or  read  of."  A  stress, 
not  intended  by  De  Quincey  himself,  may  be  laid  on  the 
word  intellectual  in  these  passages.  To  hardly  any  one 
so  little  as  to  him  could  there  have  been  applied  in  his 
youth  that  observation  which  Goethe  applied  with  such 
remarkable  prescience  to  Carlyle  in  the  year  1827,  when 
he  defined  him  as  "  a  moral  force  of  great  importance," 
and  added  that,  precisely  on  account  of  this  depth  of  the 
moral  in  his  constitution,  it  was  impossible  to  foresee  all 
that  he  would  produce  and  effect.  No  one  could  have 
said  of  De  Quincey,  at  any  time  of  his  life,  that  his 
strength  lay  in  any  predominance  of  the  moral  element 
in  his  nature.  On  the  contrary,  though  severe  enough  in 
some  of  his  criticisms  on  conduct,  and  owning  a  distinct 
aesthetic  preference  for  whatever  is  lovely  and  of  good 
report,  he  was  defective  in  original  moral  impetus  or  ve- 
hemence to  a  degree  beyond  the  average.  It  is  no  mere 
figure  from  grammar  to  say  that  few  men  have  come  into 
the  world,  or  have  gone  through  it,  with  a  more  meagre 
outfit  of  the  imperative  mood.  It  was  because  he  was  so 
weak  in  this  mood  that  we  may  call  him  so  specifically,  in 
his  own  language,  "an  intellectual  creature."  His  main 
interest  in  life  was  that  of  universal  curiosity,  sheer  in- 
quisitiveness  and  meditativeness  about  all  things  whatso- 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  187 

ever.  Hence  his  early  passion  for  the  acquisition  of  book- 
knowledge,  and  the  fact  that  before  his  twenty-fifth  year 
he  had  read  so  much  and  so  variously  as  to  be  even  then 
more  entitled  to  the  name  of  polyhistor  than  almost  any 
of  his  English  contemporaries.  Add  that  other  store  of 
knowledge  which  he  had  acquired  by  the  exercise  of  a 
most  subtle  and  insinuating  faculty  of  observation  upon 
human  life  and  character  around  him,  the  "qnicquid  agunt 
homines^''  in  all  its  varieties  of  "  votum,  timor,  ira,  voluptas, 
gaudia,  discursus;^^  and  add,  moreover,  a  preternaturally 
tenacious  memory;  and  it  will  be  seen  with  what  an  un- 
usual stock  of  materials  De  Quincey  came  to  the  craft  of 
magazine  authorship.  When  he  did  so,  in  his  thirty-fifth 
year,  it  was  under  the  compulsion  of  circumstances.  He 
would  rather  not  have  adopted  the  craft ;  he  would  rather 
have  gone  on  still  as  a  private  student  and  observer,  with 
the  chance  of  some  outcome  in  laboured  book-form  at  his 
own  leisure;  but,  once  harnessed  to  the  periodical  print- 
ing-press, he  was  at  no  loss  for  matter.  His  command  of 
German  greatly  increased  in  those  days  his  range  into  the 
unhackneyed  and  uncommon  ;  but,  without  that  help,  his 
extensive  readings  in  the  classics,  in  mediaeval  Latin,  and 
in  our  earlier  and  less-known  English  authors,  would  have 
sufficed,  in  the  grasp  of  a  memory  so  retentive  as  his,  to 
impart  to  his  writings  much  of  that  polyhistoric  charac- 
ter, that  multifariousness  of  out-of-the-way  learning,  which 
we  discern  in  them. 

It  is  an  important  advance  to  be  able  to  add  that  De 
Quincey's  writings,  so  miscellaneous  in  their  collective 
range,  are  all,  or  almost  all,  of  high  quality.  There  are 
differences  among  them  in  this  respect ;  but  there  is  hard- 
ly one  that  does  not,  in  the  stereotyped  phrase  of  review- 
ers, "  well  repay  perusal."  Remembering  this  high  general 
K     1 


188  DE  QUINCEY,  chap.] 

level  of  goodness  through  such  a  numerous  series  of  ar- 
ticles, and  remembering  the  super -excellent  goodness  of 
not  a  few,  admirers  of  De  Quincey  are  in  the  habit  of 
saying  among  themselves,  plaintively,  "Ah,  there  is  no 
such  writing  nowadays !"  and  have  actually  put  the  excla- 
mation into  print.  This  is,  in  part,  only  the  natural  ex- 
aggeration of  loyalty  to  an  old  favourite ;  and  it  forgets, 
in  the  first  place,  what  a  quantity  of  very  bad  magazine- 
writing  there  was  in  the  days  when  De  Quincey  was  at 
his  most  brilliant  in  that  business,  and  also  what  a  quan- 
tity of  excellent  writing  there  is  in  our  magazines  and  re- 
views at  present.  But,  in  a  rough  way,  the  complaint 
seems  to  hit  a  truth.  With  some  exceptions,  there  does 
seem  to  be  less  of  real  mental  exertion,  less  of  notion 
that  real  mental  exertion  is  called  for,  in  the  magazine- 
writing  and  review-writing  of  the  present  time  than  there 
was  in  the  palmy  old  days  when  De  Quincey,  Carlyle, 
Macaulay,  and  some  others  were  doing  their  best  in  our 
monthlies  and  quarterlies,  and  making  their  living  by  that 
species  of  labour.  Anything  does — any  kind  of  useful, 
or,  as  they  are  beginning  to  call  it,  "  informatory,"  printed 
matter,  or  any  compost  of  rough  proximate  ideas  on  a 
subject,  or  any  string  of  platitudes,  repeating  what  no- 
body ever  did  not  know,  if  tinselled  suflSciently  into  pret- 
ty sentences.  Not  unfrequently,  when  you  have  read  the 
article  of  greatest  celebrity  in  the  current  number  of  a 
periodical,  you  find  that  there  has  been  no  other  motive  to 
it  than  a  theftuous  hope  to  amuse  an  hour  for  you  after 
dinner  by  serving  up  to  you  again  the  plums  from  some 
book  which  you  and  every  one  else  have  read  three  weeks 
or  a  month  before,  the  entire  drift  of  the  article  other- 
wise, and  the  whole  substance  of  its  connecting  para- 
graphs, not  betraying  the  possesaion,  or  at  least  the  ex>- 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHABACTERISTICS.  189 

penditure,  of  one  quarter  of  an  ounce  of  real  or  original 
brain.  It  is  experience  such  as  this  that  makes  one,  so 
hastily,  a  laudator  temporis  acti  in  periodical  literature 
as  in  other  matters,  and  drives  one  back  to  De  Quincey'a 
sixteen  volumes  or  to  any  similar  collection,  with  such 
angry  forgetfulness  of  the  fact  that  these  collections  them- 
selves are  but  the  solid  monuments  remaining  from  amid 
acres  of  vanished  rubbish.  The  forgetfulness  is  wrong, 
but  the  result  for  readers  may  happen  to  be  beneficial. 
De  Quincey's  sixteen  volumes  of  magazine  articles  are 
full  of  brain  from  beginning  to  end.  At  the  rate  of  about 
half  a  volume  a  day,  they  would  serve  for  a  month's  read- 
ing, and  a  month  continuously  might  be  worse  expended. 
There  are  few  courses  of  reading  from  which  a  young 
man  of  good  natural  intelligence  would  come  away  more 
instructed,  charmed,  and  stimulated,  or,  to  express  the  mat- 
ter as  definitely  as  possible,  with  his  mind  more  stretched. 
Good  natural  intelligence,  a  certain  fineness  of  fibre,  and 
some  amount  of  scholarly  education,  have  to  be  presup- 
posed, indeed,  in  all  readers  of  De  Quincey.  But,  even 
for  the  fittest  readers,  a  month's  complete  and  continuous 
course  of  De  Quincey  would  be  too  much.  Better  have 
him  on  the  shelf,  and  take  down  a  volume  at  intervals  for 
one  or  two  of  the  articles  to  which  there  may  be  an  im- 
mediate attraction.  An  evening  with  De  Quincey  in  this 
manner  will  always  be  profitable. 

Not  only  was  it  De  Quincey's  laudable  habit  to  put 
brain  into  all  his  articles,  but  it  so  chanced  that  the  brain 
he  had  at  his  disposal  was  a  brain  of  no  common  order. 
Let  us  get  rid,  however  of  the  disagreeable  word  hrain^ 
and  ask,  in  more  manly  and  less  physiological  fashion, 
what  were  the  chief  characteristics  of  De  Quincey's  pe- 
culiar mind  and  genius.  At  the  basis  of  all,  as  we  havo 
35 


UO  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

seen,  was  his  learning,  his  wealth  of  miscellaneous  and  ao 
curate  knowledge.  On  that  topic  enough  has  been  said; 
and  we  advert  to  it  again  only  because  it  is  well  to  re- 
member that,  whatever  else  De  Quincey  was,  he  was  at  all 
events  a  scholar  and  polyhistor. 

But  what  was  he  besides  ?  He  was  distinguished  from 
most  modern  specimens  of  the  genus  polyhistor  by  the 
possession,  in  the  first  place,  of  a  singularly  independent, 
clear,  subtle,  exact,  and  penetrating  intellect.  The  inde- 
pendence of  his  intellect  is  in  itself  remarkable.  No  one 
was  less  disposed  to  take  common  opinions  on  trust,  no 
one  more  keenly  sceptical  in  his  general  judgments,  no 
one  more  ready  to  challenge  a  popular  or  even  a  scholastic 
tradition  on  any  subject,  re-investigate  the  evidence,  and 
persist  in  getting  at  the  root  of  the  matter  for  himself. 
His  strength  in  this  quality  has  been  called  love  of  para^ 
dox,  and  sometimes  it  does  go  to  that  length.  As  he 
himself  explained,  however,  a  paradox  is  properly  not 
something  incredible,  but  only  something  beyond  the 
bounds  of  present  belief ;  and  it  is  remarkable  how  often, 
when  he  is  followed  in  one  of  his  so-called  paradoxes,  he 
turns  out  to  be  right.  Sometimes,  when  this  happens, 
one  finds  that  it  was  the  mere  exercise  of  shrewd  common- 
sense,  a  rapid  deductive  perception  from  the  first  of  what 
must  be  the  case  in  the  circumstances,  that  enabled  him 
to  challenge  the  common  opinion ;  but  more  frequently 
it  is  his  historical  knowledge  that  serves  him,  his  power 
of  marshalling  facts  inductively  and  interpreting  their 
relations.  But,  even  when  he  fails  to  convince,  he  al- 
ways instructs,  always  suggests  something  that  remains 
in  the  mind  and  goes  on  working — never  leaves  a  question 
exactly  as  it  was.  One  is  reminded,  in  reading  him,  of 
Goldsmith's  saying  about  Burke's  conversation  in  contrast 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  Ml 

with  Johnson's.  Admiring  Johnson's  extraordinary  pow- 
ers in  that  way  as  much  as  any  man,  but  irritated  by  Bos- 
well's  perpetual  harping  on  the  theme,  "  Is  he  like  Burke, 
sir,  who  winds  into  a  subject  like  a  serpent  ?"  Goldsmith 
was  once  moved  to  ask.  Now,  this  serpentine  insinuation 
of  himself  into  the  heart  of  a  subject,  rather  than  John- 
son's direct  and  broadside  style  of  attack  upon  a  subject 
externally,  was  De  Quincey's  usual  method.  He  generally 
knows  his  conclusion  from  the  first,  and  sometimes  an- 
nounces it  dogmatically  at  the  outset;  but,  whether  for 
inquiry  towards  his  conclusion  or  for  proof  of  it  after  it 
has  been  announced,  his  habit  is  to  choose  a  point  of  en- 
try, and  thence,  by  subtle  and  intricate  windings,  to  reach 
the  centre,  where  the  concurrent  trains  will  meet,  and  all 
will  become  clear.  His  windings  have  often  the  appear- 
ance of  wilful  digressions,  and  digressiveness  is  the  fault 
with  which  he  is  most  commonly  charged.  It  was,  per- 
haps, the  same  labyrinthine  habit,  or  at  all  events  the  ten- 
dency to  long-spun  threads  of  reasoning,  that  Carlyle  had 
in  view  when  he  applied  the  epithet "  wire-drawn  "  to  some 
of  De  Quincey's  mental  products.  His  digressions,  how- 
ever, to  use  his  own  phrase,  have  a  wonderful  knack  of  re- 
volving to  the  point  whence  they  set  out,  and  generally 
with  a  fresh  freight  of  meaning  to  be  incorporated  at  that 
point ;  and,  so  far  as  one  might  acquiesce  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  some  of  De  Quincey's  mental  products  as  "  wire- 
drawn," it  is  in  cases  where  one  might  agree  with  Carlyle 
that  the  kind  of  matter  dealt  with  was  not  worth  so  much 
manipulation,  and  that  simple  assumption  or  asseveration, 
or  decision  by  a  toss-up,  would  have  saved  time  and  an- 
swered all  practical  purposes.  Very  rarely,  however,  will 
one  of  De  Quincey's  subtlest  ingenuities  be  voted  useless 
by  any  reader  who  does  come  qualified  with  the  due 


142  DE  QUINCEY.  '  [chap. 

amount  of  preliminary  interest  in  the  kind  of  matter  dis- 
cussed— so  much  pleasure  is  there  in  observing  the  inge- 
nuity itself,  and  so  certain  is  it,  as  has  been  already  said, 
that  some  germ  of  future  thought  will  be  left  if  the  imme- 
diate result  has  been  disappointing.  Then  with  what  a 
passion  for  scientific  exactness  does  De  Quincey  treat  every- 
thing, and  in  what  a  state  of  finished  clearness  at  the  end 
he  leaves  every  speculation  of  his,  so  far  as  it  may  have 
been  carried !  His  numerical  divisions  and  subdivisions,  so 
unusual  in  literary  papers,  are  themselves  signs  of  the  prac- 
tised thinker,  refusing  to  part  with  any  of  the  habits  or  de- 
vices of  scientific  analysis  wherever  they  will  help  him.  In 
short,  very  seldom  has  there  been  such  a  combination  of  the 
purely  logical  intellect  with  so  much  of  scholarly  erudition. 
De  Quincey's  intellect,  while  keenly  analytic  and  exact, 
was  also  very  rich  and  inventive.  The  distinction  will  be 
understood  by  remembering  the  essays  and  disquisitions 
of  Bacon,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Burke,  or 
Coleridge,  in  contrast  with  those  of  such  thinkers  as  Locke, 
Bishop  Butler,  David  Hume,  James  Mill,  or  Sir  William 
Hamilton.  That  the  distinction  does  not  coincide  with 
that  into  the  two  opposed  philosophical  schools  will  have 
appeared  from  the  mixture  of  names.  Neither  does  it 
connect  itself  with  any  distinction  of  emotional  tempera- 
ments among  thinkers,  as  into  the  cool  and  the  fervid. 
There  may  be  a  fervid  thinker  whose  manner  of  thinking 
is  of  the  plain  and  straightforward  sort ;  and  there  may  be 
a  cool  thinker  whose  manner  of  thinking,  while  equally 
scientific  and  precise,  is  at  the  same  time  rich  and  inven- 
tive. Nor  does  Bacon's  distinction  between  lumen  siccum, 
or  dry  light,  and  lumen  humidum,  or  light  drenched  in  the 
affections  and  customs,  correspond  exactly  with  what  is 
meant ;  nor  does  the  ordinary  distinction  between  the  non* 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  148 

poetic  and  the  poetic,  though  that  comes  nearer.  The  dis- 
tinction is  purely  one  of  intellectual  manner,  and  may  bo 
seen  where  there  is  identity  in  the  substance  of  the  thought 
to  be  expressed.  Some  writers,  knowing  what  .they  mean 
to  say  beforehand,  say  it  nakedly  and  rigidly,  with  nothing 
additional  or  subsidiary ;  others,  meaning  the  same  thing, 
and  equally  knowing  what  they  mean  beforehand,  cannot 
put  it  forth  without  putting  forth  also  a  good  deal  more 
that  has  been  generated  in  the  very  act  of  thinking  it  out, 
and  that,  while  organically  related  to  it,  may  be  indepen- 
dently interesting.  De  Quincey  belongs,  in  the  main,  to 
the  latter  class.  As  he  had  a  teeming  memory,  so  he  had, 
as  he  tells  us  himself,  "an  electric  aptitude  for  seizing 
analogies,"  or,  as  he  again  expresses  it  more  fully,  "  a  logi- 
cal instinct  for  feeling  in  a  moment  the  secret  analogies  or 
parallelisms  that  connect  things  else  apparently  remote." 
Hence  that  quality  of  his  thought  which  we  have  called 
richness  or  inventiveness.  In  the  act  of  thinking  anything, 
metonymies,  metaphors,  anecdotes,  illustrations  historical 
or  fantastic,  start  up  in  his  mind,  become  incorporate  with 
bis  primary  thought,  and  are,  in  fact,  its  language.  It^will 
not  do  to  call  this,  as  some  have  proposed,  the  literary 
mode  of  treating  a  subject,  and  to  call  the  bleaker  mode 
the  strictly  scientific;  for  the  former  may  be  as  strictly 
scientific,  as  valid  and  effective  logically,  as  the  latter.  It 
would  not  be  difficult,  at  all  events,  were  a  specimen  pas- 
sage of  exposition  or  reasoning  produced  from  a  modem 
English  writer  of  the  more  arid  and  rigid  order,  to  pro- 
duce from  De  Quincey,  if  the  same  topic  should  be  really 
within  his  province  and  he  should  chance  to  have  treated 
it,  a  parallel  passage  in  his  richer  style  beating  his  rigid 
brother's  out  of  sight  for  logical  precision  and  clearness, 
perfection  of  impression  on  the  pure  understanding.    Nev- 


144  DE   QUINCEY.  [chap. 

ertheless,  as  it  is  the  richer  and  more  inventive  style  of 
writing  that  succeeds  best  in  producing  what,  while  serv- 
ing the  purposes  of  philosophical  or  scientific  exposition, 
will  take  rank  also  distinctively  as  a  piece  of  literature^ 
there  is  no  harm  in  saying  that  De  Quincey's  intellect  was 
in  the  main  of  the  literary  order.  In  most  of  his  papers 
it  is  professedly  as  a  man  of  letters,  remembering  the  aims 
and  objects  of  literature  proper,  and  seeking  to  touch  the 
general  human  heart,  that  he  handles  philosophical  or  other 
speculative  problems.  Hence  those  egotisms,  those  fre- 
quent Montaigne-like  confidences  between  himself  and  his 
readers  as  he  proceeds,  which,  as  part  of  his  passion  for  in- 
troducing whatever  of  general  human  interest  can  be  made 
relative  to  a  subject  or  can  brighten  and  illustrate  it,  give 
to  his  most  abstract  dissertations  such  a  character  of  indi- 
viduality or  De  Quinceyism.  There  are  cases,  his  greatest 
admirers  must  admit,  in  which  the  subsidiary  swallows  up 
the  primary,  and  the  captain's  luggage  all  but  sinks  the 
ship  and  cargo.  For  example,  it  is  rather  provoking  to  a 
short  temper,  in  a  paper  on  Sir  William  Hamilton  and  his 
Philosophy,  to  find  the  exordium  consisting  of  a  long  com- 
plaint about  the  postal  diflBculties  between  Lasswade  and 
Edinburgh,  and  the  same  subject  and  others  equally  irrele- 
vant recurring  ctd  libitum  throughout,  while  poor  Sir  Wil- 
liam is  kept  waiting  in  a  corner  and  is  fetched  out  of  it 
only  at  intervals.  The  only  excuse  in  such  cases  is,  that 
De  Quincey  seems  to  have  understood  it  to  be  bargained 
between  himself  and  his  readers  that,  whatever  title  he 
gave  to  a  paper,  he  was  to  be  the  sole  judge  of  what  it 
should  turn  out  to  be,  provided  the  sum  total  should  be 
suflBciently  amusing.  Very  rarely,  however,  is  any  such 
excuse  needed.  While  it  does  seem  to  have  been  a  canon 
with  De  Quincey,  in  the  preparation  of  his  articles,  that  the 


XL]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  145 

sum  total  of  each  should  be  interesting  by  some  means  or 
other,  and  while  very  often  an  article  is  not  quite  what 
would  have  been  expected  from  the  title,  it  is  astonishing 
how  habitually,  in  the  hurry  of  magazine-writing,  he  con- 
trived to  redeem  and  justify  his  title,  keep  his  real  subject 
in  hand  through  all  seeming  involutions  and  digressions, 
return  with  artistic  fidelity  to  the  key-note,  and  leave  all  at 
the  end,  as  we  have  said,  in  a  state  of  finished  clearness. 

There  was  in  De  Quincey's  genius,  as  all  know,  a  very 
considerable  vein  of  humour.  A  sense  of  fun  follows  him 
into  his  most  serious  disquisitions,  and  reveals  itself  in 
freaks  of  playfulness  and  jets  of  comic  fancy;  and  once 
or  twice,  as  in  his  Murder  Considered  as  One  of  the  Fine 
Arts,  he  breaks  into  sheer  extravagance  or  wild  and  pro- 
tracted rollick.  Even  then  it  cannot  be  said  that  his  hu- 
mour is  of  the  largest-hearted  kind,  so  dependent  is  it  on 
deliberate  irony,  a  Petronian  jostling  of  the  ghastly  with 
the  familiar,  or  the  express  simulation  of  lunacy.  In  its  dis- 
play on  the  smaller  scale,  as  diffused  through  his  writings, 
it  is  generally  good-natured  and  kindly.  It  is  not  to  be 
denied,  however,  that  there  was  an  ingredient  of  the  mis- 
chievous or  Mephistophelic  in  De  Quincey's  temper,  which 
could  show  itself  occasionally  under  the  guise  of  his  usual- 
ly gentle  humour.  H©  could  never  have  been  "a  good 
hater,"  his  equipment  of  moral  energy  being  too  languid 
for  that ;  but  there  are  parts  and  passages  of  his  writings 
that  leave  the  impression  of  a  something  which  it  would 
be  difficult  to  distinguish  from  spite  and  malevolence. 

Humour  and  pathos,  we  have  been  told,  are  twins,  and 
inseparable.  However  that  may  be,  De  Quincey's  endow- 
ment in  pathos  was  certainly  not  less  than  his  endowment 
in  humour.  From  his  earliest  infancy,  as  we  saw,  a  sense 
ol  the  manifold  miseries  of  life  had  been  impressed  upon 
7* 


146  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

him  by  his  own  experience  and  observation,  and  had  set- 
tled in  him  into  a  kind  of  brooding  melancholy.  Not  only 
such  common  calamities  as  bereavement,  disease,  physical 
pain,  poverty,  oppression,  misconstruction,  contempt,  but 
the  rarer  and  more  secret  forms  of  anguish  that  belong  to 
peculiar  temperaments  and  fatal  shocks  of  circumstance, 
had  been  meditated  by  him,  with  the  diligence  of  a  consti- 
tutional bias  to  that  sombre  field  of  study,  and  with  con- 
tinued aids  from  his  own  troubles,  till  he  had  become  a 
master  in  the  whole  science  of  sorrow.  In  particular,  that 
early  discovery  which  had  first  made  the  word  Pariah  so 
significant  to  him — the  discovery  of  the  omnipresence  of 
inherited  and  unregarded  misery,  in  specks  or  in  masses, 
on  the  skirts  of  smiling  society,  or  actually  within  its  bos- 
om— had  accompanied  him  all  his  life  long,  till  the  word 
Pariah  had  become,  as  we  noted,  one  of  the  most  indis- 
pensable words  in  his  vocabulary,  and  the  corresponding 
notion  one  of  his  forms  of  thought.  In  his  personal  be- 
haviour, feeble  as  it  was  practically,  this  recollection  of 
the  miserable  and  dismal  on  all  sides  of  him,  this  incessant 
wandering  of  his  thoughts  to  the  slave,  the  pauper,  the 
lazar,  the  criminal,  the  street  outcast,  and  the  maniac,  had 
shown  itself  in  a  kind  of  constant  anti-Pharisaism,  a  con- 
stant self-humiliation  and  pity  for  the  abject.  Why  should 
he  abhor,  why  should  he  condemn,  why  should  he  stand 
aloof,  why  should  he  refuse  alms,  or  institute  very  rigid 
inquiries  before  giving:  what  was  he  himself  that  he 
should  be  punctilious  ?  This  mood,  and  the  theme  which 
occasioned  it,  he  carried  into  his  writings.  There,  too, 
one  finds  an  habitual  recollection  of  the  variety  and  im- 
mensity of  suffering  diffused  through  life ;  and  there,  too, 
the  inclination  of  the  teaching,  in  the  matter  of  the  ways 
and  means  of  dealing  with  crime  and  misery,  is  always  to* 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHAKACTERISTICS.  147 

wards  what  is  commonly  called  "the  sentimental,"  but 
some  would  call  "  the  Christian."  Hence  also,  in  part,  the 
frequent  tendency  to  the  lyrical  and  plaintive  in  the  cast 
of  De  Quincey's  language. 

There  was  yet  a  grander  source  of  this  tendency  to  the 
lyrical  in  his  feeling  for  the  mysterious  and  sublime.  It 
was  a  saying  of  his  own  that  he  could  not  live  without 
mystery.  No  man  that  is  worth  much  can.  If  all  hu- 
manity could  be  rolled  into  one  soul,  to  think  and  feel  as 
such,  then  all  those  activities  and  necessities  having  been 
abolished  which  arise  from  the  very  fact  that  it  is  distrib- 
uted or  disparate,  into  what  mood  could  it  settle  and  be 
absorbed  but  that  of  wondering  speculation  into  its  own 
origin?  On  this  very  account,  is  not  this  mood,  which 
may  be  called  the  metaphysical  mood,  the  most  essentially 
and  specifically  human  of  all  moods?  Most  people  have 
no  time  for  it ;  they  have  too  much  to  do ;  but  he  is  hard- 
ly a  man  who  does  not  fall  into  it  sometimes ;  and  it  is 
nursed  in  some  into  abnormal  intensity  by  constitutional 
aptitude  and  by  habits  of  solitude.  De  Quincey  was  one 
of  these.  He  was  wrapt  in  a  general  religious  wonder ;  he 
went  through  the  world,  one  may  «ay,  in  a  fit  of  meta- 
physical musing.  But  not  only  was  he  occupied,  as  all 
such  minds  are,  with  the  great  objects  of  religious  contem- 
plation in  its  most  abstract  reaches  towards  the  invisible, 
and  with  the  standing  metaphysical  problems  connected 
with  those  objects ;  his  sense  of  mystery  fastened  also  on 
all  those  elementary  sublimities  in  nature  or  life  which,  by 
their  pre-eminent  power  over  the  human  imagination,  seem 
like  the  chief  irruptions  of  the  invisible  and  supernatural 
into  the  sphere  of  man.  The  thunder  and  the  lightning, 
the  sun  in  the  heavens,  the  nocturnal  sky,  the  quiet  vast- 
ness  of  a  mountain-range,  the  roar  of  the  unresting  ocean, 


148  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

the  carnage  of  a  great  battle-field,  the  stealthy  ravage  of  a 
pestilence,  the  tramp  of  a  multitude  in  insurrection,  a  Joan 
of  Arc  heroic  and  death-defying  before  her  judges,  Caesar 
at  the  Rubicon  when  the  world  hung  on  his  decision  and 
there  came  upon  him  the  phrenzy  to  cross — such  were  the 
physical  grandeurs,  and  such  the  facts  and  moments  of  his- 
toric majesty,  with  which  De  Quincey's  mind  delighted  to 
commune,  as  if  seeing  in  them  the  clearest  messages  from 
infinitude  and  the  most  startling  intimations  of  the  inter- 
mingling of  the  demoniacal  with  the  divine.  Yet  another 
descent,  however,  and  we  find  his  passion  for  mystery  tak- 
ing relief  even  in  the  wizardly  and  necromantic.  Among 
the  passages  of  his  early  reading  which  had  struck  him 
with  an  effect  so  extraordinary  that  he  could  account  for 
it  only  by  supposing  that  they  had  wakened  special  aflSni- 
ties  in  his  constitution,  he  mentions  particularly  the  open- 
ing scene  in  Macbeth : 

*^A  Desert  Place.     Thunder  and  Lightning.    Enter  three  Witches. 
"  Mrst  Witch.      When  shall  we  three  meet  again, 

In  thunder,  lightning,  or  in  rain  ? 
"  Second  Witch.  When  the  hurly-burly's  done, 

When  the  battle's  lost  and  won. 
"  Third  Witch.    That  will  be  ere  the  set  of  sun." 

It  would  be  diflScult  for  any  one  not  to  carry  away  some- 
thing of  the  feeling  of  this  passage,  and  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands have  done  so ;  but  what  we  observe  in  De  Quincey 
is,  that  he  carried  away  the  feeling  and  retained  it  in  that 
form  of  a  permanent  tenet  which  it  seems  to  have  held  in 
Shakspeare's  own  creed :  viz.,  in  the  form  of  a  postulate 
for  the  imagination,  if  not  for  the  reason,  of  the  interfer- 
ence in  human  affairs  of  other  and  more  occult  agencies 
than  are  dreamt  of  in  the  ordinary  philosophy.  No  one, 
indeed,  could  be  more  humorously  pungent  on  all  super 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  149 

stitions  of  the  witchcraft  order  than  De  Quincey  was.  He 
took  special  pleasure  in  showing  how,  by  the  application 
of  mathematics  and  physical  tests,  the  most  pretentious 
of  those  superstitions,  such  as  astrology,  could  be  blasted 
into  nonsense.  But  this  does  not  prevent  our  detecting 
in  him  a  lurking  fondness  for  some  personal  variety  of  the 
doctrine  of  a  possible  interfusion  of  the  non- human  or 
quondam-human  with  the  known  life  of  the  present.  Per- 
haps the  best  name  for  this  variety  of  the  affection  for  the 
mysterious  in  De  Quincey's  mind  is  Druidism,  or  the  Dru- 
idic  element.  It  is  a  more  common  element  in  British 
genius,  and  perhaps  a  more  respectable,  than  is  generally 
supposed.  It  reveals  itself  in  De  Quincey  in  his  fondness 
for  noting  dreams,  omens,  casual  symbolisms,  marvellous 
coincidences,  anticipations  or  prophecies  of  death,  and  the 
like,  and  also  in  his  liking  for  such  subjects  of  historical 
investigation  as  secret  societies — Freemasonry,  Rosicrucian- 
ism,  and  the  Pagan  Oracles. 

To  be  noted,  finally,  in  this  enumeration  of  De  Quin- 
cey's characteristics,  is  the  prominence  in  his  genius  of 
the  special  faculty  of  poetic  imagination.  Though  in- 
volved partly  in  what  has  just  been  said  as  to  the  strength 
of  his  feeling  for  the  mysterious  and  sublime,  and  also  in 
what  was  formerly  said  as  to  the  richness  and  inventive- 
ness of  his  manner  of  thinking  on  any  subject,  this  re- 
mark is  really  independent.  The  feeling  for  the  mysteri- 
ous and  sublime  is  a  natural  cause  of  poetic  conception, 
and  a  habit  of  poetic  conception  will  contribute,  with 
other  things,  to  richness  or  literary  charm  in  the  treat- 
ment of  a  subject;  but  the  poetic  faculty,  in  its  distinct 
and  special  form,  is  the  faculty  of  continuous  constructive 
dreaming,  of  "  bodying  forth  the  forms  of  things  un- 
known," of  turning  meanings   and   feelings  into  actual 


160  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

"shapes,"  i.  e.,  into  visual  and  representative  phantasies. 
In  what  large  measure  De  Quincey  possessed  this  faculty, 
and  how  conscious  he  was  that  the  specimens  of  it  he  had 
left  might  be  one  of  his  distinctions  among  English  prose 
writers,  are  as  generally  known  as  the  fact  of  his  opium- 
eating,  and  are,  indeed,  often  connected  with  that  fact  in 
recollections  of  him. 

In  an  essay  on  "  The  Genius  of  De  Quincey  "  Mr.  Shad- 
worth  Hodgson,  who  knew  him  personally,  vouches  that 
no  description  of  him  could  surpass  for  exactness  that 
provided  beforehand  by  the  poet  Thomson  in  the  stanza 
of  his  Castle  of  Indolence  in  which  he  introduces  the  bard 
Philomelus : 

"He  came,  the  bard,  a  little  Druid  wight 
Of  withered  nspect ;  but  his  eye  was  keen, 
With  sweetness  mixed.    In  russet  brown  bedight, 
As  is  his  sister  of  the  copses  green, 
He  crept  along,  unpromising  of  mien. 
Gross  he  who  judges  so !    His  soul  was  fair, 
Bright  as  the  children  of  yon  azure  sheen. 
True  comeliness,  which  nothing  can  impair. 
Dwells  in  the  mind :  all  else  is  vanity  and  glare." 

The  quotation  is  a  happy  one,  and  entitles  Mr.  Hodgson 
to  our  thanks.  By  this  time,  however,  we  ought  to  know 
our  little  Druid  wight  somewhat  more  intimately  than 
by  his  external  appearance.  It  remains  only  to  say  some- 
thing about  his  English  style. 

In  no  case  is  there  better  proof  or  illustration  than  in 
De  Quincey's  of  the  important  principle  of  the  radical 
identity  of  style  and  thought,  the  impossibility  of  sepa- 
rating them  in  ultimate  theory,  and  the  mischief  of  the 
common  habit  of  conceiving  otherwise.  In  writing  or 
speaking,  it  is  not  as  if  you  first  obtained  your  thought, 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  151 

and  then  looked  about  for  a  mantle  in  which  to  dress  it, 
and  might  choose  the  mantle  coarse  or  fine,  loose  or  tight, 
green  or  purple.  The  mantle  itself,  every  fibre  of  it,  is  a 
fabrication  of  thinkings  and  feelings,  coming  into  exist- 
ence by  the  very  action  and  motion  of  that  main  thought 
or  feeling  which  you  call  the  core  or  substance,  and  or- 
ganically united  with  it,  and  partaking  of  all  its  qualities. 
To  change  your  style  is  to  change  your  mode  of  think- 
ing; nay,  to  change  the  kind  of  matter  that  you  will 
allow  to  come  into  your  mind.  All  those  characteristics 
of  De  Quincey's  mind  that  have  been  enumerated  repro- 
duce themselves,  therefore,  as  characteristics  of  his  style, 
and  may  be  observed  and  studied  afresh  under  that  name. 
Hence,  too,  an  excellency  in  him  that  ought  to  be  found 
in  every  writer  who  ranges  over  any  considerable  variety 
of  subjects — to  wit,  a  versatility  of  style,  a  change  in  the 
character  of  the  wording  and  the  syntax,  from  the  simple 
and  plain  to  the  richer  and  more  involved,  answering  to 
every  change  in  the  matter,  mood,  or  purpose.  To  write 
always  in  an  easy  conversational  style  means  never  to 
allow  anything  to  come  into  the  mind  that  could  not  be 
generated  in  the  course  of  easy  conversation  with  a  friend 
or  two — which,  as  friends  now  go,  would  be  hard  news 
for  philosophy,  poetry,  and  a  few  other  things  that  are 
considered  not  unimportant ;  to  try  to  write  always  like 
Goldsmith  or  Charles  Lamb  means  to  beg  to  have  your 
mind  taken  back  and  re-melted  into  the  precise  mould  of 
Goldsmith's  or  Charles  Lamb's — which  might  be  an  ex- 
change in  your  favour,  but  is  impossible ;  to  write  always 
in  good  old  Saxon  English  and  eschew  Latin  and  Greek 
words  means  to  abstain  from  traffic  with  all  objects  and 
notions  that  have  come  into  the  cognisance  of  the  English 
intellect  since  the  time  of  King  Harold,  or  else  to  make 


ISa  DE  QUmCEY.  [CH4P. 

yourself  a  scarecrow  and  laughing  -  stoct,  and  forswear 
some  of  the  noblest  glories  of  your  composite  nationality, 
by  rigging  yourself  up  in  imagined  equivalents  from  the 
vocabulary  of  Cedric  and  Gurth  the  swineherd.  All  the 
same;  while  there  ought  to  be  this  expectation  of  variety 
in  the  style  of  a  writer,  according  to  his  subject  and  pur- 
pose, it  remains  true  that  every  writer  has,  on  the  whole, 
a  style  of  his  own.  He  is  discernible  from  others  by  his 
style,  just  as,  and  just  because,  he  is  discernible  from 
others  by  the  total  contour  of  that  combination  of  mental 
qualities  which  is  called  his  genius.  Like  most  other  tra- 
ditional and  time-honoured  distinctions,  the  distinction 
between  thought  and  style  is  practically  valuable;  it  is, 
indeed,  indispensable  in  criticism ;  but  the  reason  is,  that 
the  study  of  a  writer's  style  is,  in  fact,  one  way,  and  the 
most  obvious  way,  of  becoming  minutely  acquainted  with 
his  mental  resources  and  processes.  Style  is  mental  be- 
haviour from  moment  to  moment ;  and,  if  it  involves  such 
a  thing  as  a  self-imposed  rule  or  rhythm,  then  that  rule  or 
rhythm  is  itself  a  function  of  the  mind  that  imposes  it, 
contents  included  as  well  as  habits. 

The  style  of  De  Quincey,  as  might  be  expected,  is  pre- 
vailingly intellectual.  There  is  nothing  tempestuous  in 
it;  we  are  not  hurried  along  by  any  excess  of  rage  or 
other  animating  passion.  Even  when  his  pathos  or  his 
feeling  of  the  mysterious  and-  sublime  is  at  its  highest, 
and  the  strain  accordingly  becomes  most  lyrical,  we  are 
aware  of  the  presence  of  a  keen  intellectual  perceptive- 
ness,  an  artistic  self-possession,  a  power  of  choosing  and 
reasoning  among  different  means  towards  a  desired  effect. 
It  is  a  beautiful  style,  uniquely  De  Quincey's,  the  charac- 
teristic of  which,  in  its  more  level  and  easy  specimens,  is 
intellectual  nimbleness,  a  light  precision  and  softness  of 


XL]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  163 

spring,  while  in  the  higher  specimens,  where  the  move- 
ment becomes  more  involved  and  intricately  rhythmical, 
there  is  still  the  same  sense  of  a  leisurely  intellectual  in' 
stinct,  rather  than  glow  and  rapture,  as  regulating  the 
feat.  If  one  could  fancy  such  a  thing  as  a  flow  of  ivy  or 
other  foliage,  rich,  soft,  and  glancing,  but  not  too  dense, 
advancing  quietly  over  a  surface  and  covering  it  equably, 
but  with  a  power  of  shooting  itself  rapidly  to  selected 
points  and  pinnacles,  that  might  be  an  image  of  De  Quin- 
cey's  language  overspreading  a  subject.  It  moves  quietly, 
enfolding  all  it  meets  with  easy  grace,  and  leaving  a  vest- 
ure pleasantly  soft  and  fine,  rather  than  gaudily-varied  or 
obtrusive;  but  it  can  collect  itself  into  rings  of  over- 
growth, or  shoot  into  devices  and  festoons.  Very  often, 
when  the  subject  is  simple,  when  it  is  an  ordinary  piece 
of  description  or  explanation  that  is  on  hand,  the  phras- 
ing is  familiar  and  colloquial,  with  short  and  simple  sen- 
tences to  correspond,  though  even  then  with  a  scholarly 
tact  for  neatness  and  accuracy,  a  quest  of  liveliness  and 
elegance,  and  a  wonderful  power  of  alighting  on  the  exact 
word  that  is  fittest.  The  tendency  of  De  Quincey,  how- 
ever, as  all  know,  is  to  subjects  of  a  recondite  order,  and 
to  the  recondite  in  all  subjects ;  and  hence  what  is  usually 
remembered  as  De  Quincey's  style  is  that  style  of  more 
stately  complexity,  with  long  evolutions  and  harmonies  of 
sentence,  and  free  resort  to  all  the  wealth  of  the  Latin  ele- 
ment in  our  tongue,  of  which  his  more  elaborate  writings 
are  examples.  On  this  subject  of  the  "  elaborate  "  style  a 
quotation  from  himself,  reflecting  on  the  style  of  Hazlitt 
and  Charles  Lamb,  may  be  relevant : 

"  Hazlitt  was  not  eloquent,  because  he  was  discontinuous.    No  man 
can  be  eloquent  whose  thoughts  are  abrupt,  insulated,  capricious,  and 
(to  borrow  an  impressive  word  from  Coleridge)  non  -  sequacious. 
L 


164  DE  QFINCEY.  [cha>. 

Eloquence  resides  not  in  separate  or  fractional  ideas,  but  in  the  rela- 
tions of  manifold  ideas,  and  in  the  mode  of  their  evolution  from  each 
other.  It  is  not,  indeed,  enough  that  the  ideas  should  be  many,  and 
their  relations  coherent ;  the  main  condition  lies  in  the  key  of  the 
evolution,  in  the  law  of  the  succession.  The  elements  are  nothing 
without  the  atmosphere  that  moulds,  and  the  dynamic  forces  that 
combine.  Now,  Hazlitt's  brilliancy  is  seen  chiefly  in  separate  splin- 
terings  of  phrase  or  image,  which  throw  upon  the  eye  a  vitreous  scin- 
tillation for  a  moment,  but  spread  no  deep  suffusions  of  colour,  and 
distribute  no  masses  of  mighty  shadow.  A  flash,  a  solitary  flash,  and 
all  is  gone.  .  .  .  HazUtt's  thoughts  were  of  the  same  fractured  and 
discontinuous  order  as  his  illustrative  images — seldom  or  never  self- 
diffusive  ;  and  that  is  a  sufficient  argument  that  he  had  never  culti- 
vated philosophic  thinking.  .  ,  .  We  are  bound  to  acknowledge  that 
Lamb  thought  otherwise  on  this  point,  manifesting  what  seemed  to 
lis  an  extravagant  admiration  of  Hazlitt,  and  perhaps  even  in  part 
for  that  very  glitter  which  we  are  denouncing ;  at  least  he  did  so  in 
conversation  with  ourselves.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  as  this  conver- 
sation travelled  a  little  into  the  tone  of  a  disputation,  and  our  frost 
on  this  point  might  seem  to  justify  some  undue  fervour  by  way  of 
balance,  it  is  very  possible  that  Lamb  did  not  speak  his  absolute  and 
dispassionate  judgment.  And  yet  again,  if  he  did,  may  we,  with  all 
reverence  for  Lamb's  exquisite  genius,  have  permission  to  say  that 
his  own  intellect  sinned  by  this  very  habit  of  discontinuity  ?  ...  He 
himself,  we  fear,  not  bribed  by  indulgent  feelings  to  another,  not 
moved  by  friendship,  but  by  native  tendency,  shrank  from  the  con- 
tinuous, from  the  sustained,  from  the  elaborate.  The  elaborate,  in- 
deed, without  which  much  truth  and  beauty  must  perish  in  germ, 
was  by  name  the  object  of  his  invectives.  The  instances  are  many, 
in  his  own  beautiful  essays,  where  he  Uterally  collapses,  literally 
sinks  away  from  openings  suddenly  offering  themselves  to  flights 
of  pathos  or  solemnity  in  direct  prosecution  of  his  own  theme.  On 
any  such  summons,  where  an  ascending  impulse  and  an  untired  pinion 
were  required,  he  ref%ises  himself  (to  use  military  language)  invaria- 
bly. The  least  observing  reader  of  Elia  cannot  have  failed  to  notice 
that  his  most  felicitous  passages  always  accomplish  their  circuit  in  a 
few  sentences.  The  gyration  within  which  his  sentiment  wheels,  no 
matter  of  what  kind  it  may  be,  is  always  the  shortest  possible.  It 
does  not  prolong  itself,  it  does  not  repeat  itself,  it  does  not  propagate 


XL]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  158 

Itself.  . .  .  We  ourselves,  occupying  the  very  station  of  polar  oppo- 
sition to  that  of  Lamb,  being  as  morbidly,  perhaps,  in  the  one  excess 
as  he  in  the  other,  naturally  detected  this  omission  in  Lamb's  nature 
at  an  early  stage  of  our  acquaintance.  Not  the  famed  Regtilus,  with 
his  eyelids  torn  away,  and  his  uncurtained  eyeballs  exposed  to  the 
noontide  glare  of  a  Carthaginian  sun,  could  have  shrieked  with  more 
anguish  of  recoil  from  torture  than  we  from  certain  sentences  and 
periods  in  which  Lamb  perceived  no  fault  at  all.  Pomp,  in  our  ap- 
prehension, was  an  idea  of  two  categories ;  the  pompous  might  be 
spurious,  but  it  might  also  be  genuine.  It  is  well  to  love  the  simple — 
we  love  it;  nor  is  there  any  opposition  at  all  between  tJiat  and  the 
very  glory  of  pomp.  But,  as  we  once  put  the  case  to  Lamb,  if,  as  a  mu- 
sician, as  the  leader  of  a  mighty  orchestra,  you  had  this  theme  offer- 
ed to  you, '  Belshazzar  the  king  gave  a  great  feast  to  a  thousand  of 
his  lords,'  or  this,  '  And  on  a  certain  day  Marcus  Cicero  stood  up, 
and  in  a  set  speech  rendered  thanks  to  Caius  Caesar  for  Quintus  Li- 
garius  pardoned  and  Marcus  Marcellus  restored,'  surely  no  man  would 
deny  that  in  such  a  case  simplicity,  though  in  a  passive  sense  not  law- 
fully absent,  must  stand  aside  as  totally  insufficient  for  the  positive 
part." 

A  great  deal  of  De  Quincey's  best  and  most  characteristic 
writing  is  in  the  stately  and  elaborate  style  here  described, 
the  style  of  sustained  splendour,  of  prolonged  wheeling 
and  soaring,  as  distinct  from  the  style  of  crackle  and  brief 
glitter,  of  chirp  and  short  flight.  This  is  precisely  on  ac- 
count of  the  exalted  and  intricate  nature  of  his  meaning 
and  feeling  in  those  cases ;  and,  if  some  readers  there  fall 
off  from  him  or  dislike  him,  it  is  because  they  themselves 
are  deficient  in  wing  and  sinew.  For  those  who  do  adhere 
to  him  and  follow  him  in  his  passages  of  more  involved 
and  sustained  eloquence  there  are  few  greater  pleasures 
possible  in  modern  English  prose.  However  magnificent 
the  wording,  there  is  always  such  an  exact  fit  between  it 
and  the  amount  and  shape  of  the  under-fluctuating  thought, 
that  suspicion  of  inflation  or  bombast  anywhere  never  oc- 
curs to  one.  The  same  presence  everywhere  of  a  vigilant 
36 


166  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

intellect  appears  in  the  perfect  logical  articulation  of  sen- 
tence with  sentence  and  of  clause  with  clause ;  while  the 
taste  of  the  technical  artist  appears  equally  in  the  study  of 
minute  optical  coherence  in  the  imagery  and  in  the  fastid- 
ious care  for  fine  sound.  In  this  last  quality  of  style — to 
which,  in  its  lowest  degree,  Bentham  gave  the  name  of 
pronunciabiliti/,  insisting  most  strenuously  on  its  impor- 
tance in  all  writing — De  Quincey  is  a  master.  Such  was 
the  delicacy  of  his  ear,  however,  that  mere  pronunciahility 
was  not  enough  for  him,  and  musical  beauty  had  to  be 
superadded.  Once,  writing  of  Father  Newman,  and  hav- 
ing described  him  as  "  originally  the  ablest  son  of  Pusey- 
ism,  but  now  a  powerful  architect  of  religious  philosophy 
on  his  own  account,"  he  interrupts  himself  to  explain  that 
he  might  have  ended  the  sentence  more  briefly  by  substi- 
tuting for  the  last  nine  words  the  single  phrase  "  master- 
builder,"  but  that  his  ear  could  not  endure  "a  sentence 
ending  with  two  consecutive  trochees,  and  each  of  those 
trochees  ending  with  the  same  syllable  er."  He  adds, 
"Ah,  reader!  I  would  the  gods  had  made  thee  rhythmical, 
that  thou  mightest  comprehend  the  thousandth  part  of 
my  labours  in  the  evasion  of  cacophony."  The  last 
phrase,  "  the  evasion  of  cacophony,"  is  an  instance  of  an- 
other of  De  Quincey's  verbal  habits  in  his  more  elaborate 
writing — his  deliberate  choice  now  and  then  of  an  un- 
usually learned  combination  of  Latin  or  Greek  or  other 
polysyllabic  words.  Often,  as  in  the  present  instance,  it  is 
a  whim  of  mere  humour  or  self-irony.  Often,  however,  it 
is  from  a  desire  to  be  exact  to  his  meaning  and  to  leave 
that  meaning  indissolubly  associated  with  the  word  or 
phrase  that  does  most  closely  express  it.  Occasionally,  as 
when  he  speaks  of  "  the  crepuscular  antelucan  worship  "  of 
the  Essenes,  or  of  a  sentence  as  being  liable  to  "  a  whole 


XI.]  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  157 

nosology  of  malconformations,"  or  of  the  importance  at- 
tached to  the  mystery  of  baptism  among  our  forefathers 
as  "shown  by  the  multiplied  ricochets  through  which  it 
impressed  itself  upon  their  vocabulary,"  it  will  depend  on 
the  temper  and  the  intellectual  alertness  of  the  reader  at 
the  moment  whether  the  phrase  is  accepted  or  voted  need- 
lessly quaint  and  abstruse;  but  most  of  his  Latinisms  or 
other  neologisms  do  recommend  themselves  as  at  once 
luminous  and  tasteful,  and  it  is  hardly  to  them  that  excep- 
tion is  taken  by  his  most  severe  critics.  They  object  rath- 
er to  certain  faults  to  which  he  is  liable  in  those  portions 
of  his  writings  where  he  affects  the  brisk  and  popular. 
By  a  kind  of  reaction  from  his  other  extreme  of  stateli- 
ness,  he  is  then  apt  to  be  too  familiar  and  colloquial,  and 
to  help  himself  to  slang  and  kitchen -rhetoric.  He  will 
speak  of  a  thing  as  "  smashed  " — which  is  too  violent  for 
the  nerves  of  those  who  cannot  bear  to  see  a  thing  "  smash- 
ed," but  prefer  that  it  should  be  "  broken  in  pieces "  or 
"reduced  to  fragments;"  he  will  interject  such  an  excla- 
mation as  "  0  crimini !" — which  is  unpardonable  in  sedate 
society ;  he  will  take  the  Jewish  historian  Josephus  by  the 
button,  address  him  as  "  Joe  "  through  a  whole  article,  and 
give  him  a  black  eye  into  the  bargain — which  is  positive- 
ly profane.  In  most  such  cases  one  does  not  see  why 
De  Quincey  should  not  have  the  same  liberty  as  Swift  or 
Thackeray ;  but  it  must  be  admitted  that  sometimes  the 
joke  is  feeble  and  the  slang  unpleasant.  In  excuse  one  has 
to  remember  that  a  magazine -writer  is  often  driven  to 
shifts.  And,  slips  of  taste  in  the  vocabulary  discounted, 
how  many  magazine-writers  will  compete  with  De  Quincey 
in  the  accuracy,  the  disciplined  accuracy,  of  his  grammar  ? 
His  pointing  in  itself  is  a  testimony  to  the  logical  clearness 
of  his  intellect ;  and  I  have  found  no  single  recurrine  fault 


158  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap.  xi. 

of  syntax  in  his  style,  unless  it  be  in  his  sanction  of  a  very 
questionable  use  of  the  English  participle.  "  No  Christian 
state  could  be  much  in  advance  of  another,  supposing  that 
Popery  opposed  no  barriers  to  free  communication,"  is  an 
example  of  a  frequent  construction  with  De  Quincey, 
which  I  wish  he  had  avoided.  As  he  has  not,  the  benefit 
of  his  authority  may  be  claimed  for  that  apparent  slovenli- 
ness of  an  unrelated  or  misrelated  participle  which,  by  some 
fiction  of  an  elliptical  case-absolute,  or  of  transmutation  of 
the  participial  form  into  a  conjunction  or  adverb,  passes  as 
consistent  with  the  free  genius  of  our  uninflected  language. 
But  it  jars  on  a  classic  sense  of  grammar,  and  is  wholly 
unnecessary.* 

'  For  a  minute  and  instructive  study  of  the  mechanism  of  De 
Quincey's  style,  I  may  refer  to  Professor  Minto's  Mamud  of  English 
Prose  lAterature. 


CHAPTER  Xn. 

DK  quincet's  writings:  classification  and  review. 

How  are  De  Quincey's  writings  to  be  classified  ?  His  own 
classification,  propounded  in  the  General  Preface  to  the 
edition  of  his  Collected  Works,  was  to  the  effect  that  they 
might  be  distributed  roughly  into  three  sorts — first,  those 
papers  of  fact  and  reminiscence  the  object  of  which  was 
primarily  to  amuse  the  reader,  though  they  might  reach  to 
a  higher  interest,  e.  g.,  the  Autobiographic  Sketches  ;  sec- 
ondly/, essays  proper,  or  papers  addressing  themselves  pure- 
ly or  primarily  to  "the  understanding  as  an  insulated 
faculty,"  e.  g.,  The  Ussenes,  The  Ccesars,  and  Cicero ;  and, 
thirdly,  th&t  "far  higher  class  of  compositions"  which 
might  be  considered  as  examples  of  a  very  rare  kind  of 
"  impassioned  prose,"  e.  g.,  large  portions  of  The  Confes- 
sions of  an  Opium-eater  and  the  supplementary  Suspiria 
de  Profundis.  This  classification,  though  not  quite  the 
same  as  Bacon's  division  of  the  "  parts  of  learning "  (by 
which  he  meant  "kinds  of  literature")  into  History,  or 
the  Literature  of  Memory;  Philosophy,  or  the  Literature  of 
Reason ;  and  Poetry,  or  the  Literature  of  Imagination,  is 
practically  equivalent.  Hence,  as  Bacon's  classification  is 
the  more  scientific  and  searching,  and  also  the  most  fa- 
miliar and  popular,  we  shall  be  pretty  safe  in  adopting  it, 
and  dividing  De  Quincey's  writings  into :  (L)  Writings  of 
Reminiscence,  or  Descriptive,  Biographical,  and  Historical 


160  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Writings;  (11.)  Speculative,  Didactic,  and  Critical  Writ- 
ings; (III.)  Imaginative  Writings  and  Prose-Poetry.  It 
is  necessary,  above  all  things,  to  premise  that  in  De  Quin- 
cey  the  three  sorts  of  writing  shade  continually  into  each 
other.  Where  this  diflSculty  of  the  constant  blending  of 
kinds  in  one  and  the  same  paper  is  not  met  by  the  obvi- 
ous preponderance  of  one  of  the  kinds,  it  may  be  obviated 
by  naming  some  papers  in  more  divisions  than  one.  With 
that  understanding,  we  proceed  to  a  classified  synopsis  of 
De  Quincey's  literary  remains : 

L  Descriptive,  Biographical,  and  Historical. 

The  writings  of  this  class  may  be  enumerated  and  sub- 
divided as  follows : 

I.  Autobiographic  : — Specially  of  this  kind  are  The  Confessions  of 
an  English  Opium-eater  and  the  Autobiographic  Sketches ;  but  auto- 
biographic matter  is  dispersed  through  other  papers. 

II.  Biographic  Sketches  of  Persons  Known  to  the  Author  : — 
Some  such  are  included  in  the  autobiographic  writings ;  but  distinct 
papers  of  the  kind  are  Recollections  of  the  Lake  Poets,  or  Sketches  of 
Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Southey,  and  the  articles  entitled  Coleridge 
and  Opium-eating,  Chxirles  Lamb,  Professor  Wilson,  Sir  William  Ham^ 
ilton.  Walking  Stewart,  Note  on  Hazlitt,  and  Dr.  Parr,  or  Whiggism 
in  its  Relations  to  Literature.  All  these  papers  are  partly  critical. 
Several  papers  of  the  same  sort  that  appeared  in  magazines  have 
not  been  reprinted  in  the  Collective  British  Edition. 

III.  Other  Biographic  Sketches: — Shakspeare  (in  Vol.  XV.), 
Milton  (in  Vol.  X.),  Pope  (in  Vol.  XV.),  Richard  Berdley,  Percy  Bysshe 
Shdley,  The  Marquis  Wellesley,  Last  Days  of  Immmmd  Kant  (a  digest 
from  the  German),  Lessing,  Herder,  Goethe  (in  Vol.  XV.),  Schiller. 
These  also  include  criticism  with  biography. 

IV.  Historical  Sketches  and  Descriptions  : — Homer  and  the  Ho- 
meridce,  Philosophy  of  Herodotus,  Toilette  of  the  Hebrew  Lady  (archaeo- 
logical), The  Ccesars  (in  six  chapters,  forming  the  greater  part  of  Vol. 
IX.),  Cliarlemagne,  Revolt  of  the  Tartars,  The  Revolution  of  Greece, 
Modern  Greece,  Ceylon,  China  (a  little  essay  on  the  Chinese  charac- 


HL]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  161 

ter,  with  illustrations),  Modem  Superstiiion,  Anecdotage,  French  and 
Englwh  Manners,  Account  of  the  Williams  Murders  (the  postscript  to 
"  Murder  Considered  as  One  of  the  Fine  Arts  ").  In  the  same  sub- 
class we  would  include  the  two  important  papers  entitled  Rhetoric 
and  Style;  for,  though  to  a  considerable  extent  critical  and  didactic, 
they  are,  despite  their  titles,  chiefly  surveys  of  Literary  History. 

V.  Historical  Speculations  and  Researches  : — In  this  class  may 
be  included  Cicero,  The  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals,  Greece  under  the 
Romans,  Judas  Iscariot,  The  JSssenes,  The  Pagan  Oracles,  Secret  Socie- 
ties, Historico-critical  Inquiry  into  the  Origin  of  the  Rosicrudans  anil 
Freemasons,  jElius  Lamia. 

The  two  Autobiographic  volnmes,  and  the  volume  of 
Reminiscences  of  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  and  Southey, 
are  among  the  best  known  of  De  Quincey's  writings. 
Among  the  other  biographic  sketches  of  persons  known 
to  him,  Charles  Lamb,  Walking  Stewart,  and  Dr.  Parr  are 
those  of  the  highest  merit — the  last  very  severe  and  satir- 
ical, but  full  of  interest  and  of  marked  ability.  Of  the 
other  biographic  sketches  the  ablest  and  most  interesting 
by  far  is  Richard  Bentley,  a  really  splendid  specimen  of 
biography  in  miniature.  The  Encyclopaedia  article  on 
Shakspeare,  though  somewhat  thin,  deserves  notice  for 
the  perfection  of  its  proportions  as  a  summary  of  what  is 
essential  in  our  information  respecting  Shakspeare's  life. 
It  is  not  yet  superannuated.  The  similar  article  on  Pope 
is  interesting  as  an  expression  of  De  Quincey's  generous 
admiration  all  in  all  of  a  poet  whom  he  treats  very  severe- 
ly in  detail  in  some  of  his  critical  papers ;  and  it  is  rare 
to  meet  so  neat  and  workman-like  a  little  curiosity  as  the 
paper  on  The  Marquis  Wellesley.  Of  the  personal  sketch- 
es of  eminent  Germans,  that  entitled  The  Last  Days  of 
Immanuel  Kant,  though  it  is  only  a  translated  digest  from 
a  German  original,  bears  the  palm  for  delicious  richness 
of  anecdote  and  vividness  of  portraiture.  De  Quincey's 
8 


168  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

credit  in  it,  except  in  so  far  as  he  shaped  and  changed  and 
infused  life  while  translating  (which  was  a  practice  of  his), 
rests  on  the  fact  that  he  was  drawn  to  the  subject  by  his 
powerful  interest  in  Kant's  philosophy,  and  conceived  the 
happy  idea  of  such  a  mode  of  creating  among  his  coun- 
trymen a  personal  affection  for  the  great  abstract  thinker. 
Some  of  the  other  German  sketches,  especially  Lessing  and 
Herder^  have  the  same  special  merit  of  being  early  and 
useful  attempts  to  introduce  some  knowledge  of  German 
thought  and  literature  into  England;  but  the  Goethe,  on 
all  accounts,  is  discreditable.  It  exhibits  De  Quincey  at 
about  his  very  worst ;  for,  though  raising  the  estimate  of 
Goethe's  genius  that  had  been  announced  in  the  earlier 
critical  paper  on  his  "Wilhelm  Meister,"  it  retains  some- 
thing of  the  malice  of  that  paper. 

When  we  pass  to  the  papers  of  historical  description  it 
is  hardly  a  sui-prise  to  find  that  it  is  De  Quincey's  ten- 
dency in  such  papers  to  run  to  disputed  or  momentous 
"  points  "  and  concentrate  the  attention  on  those.  A  mag- 
azine paper  did  not  afford  breadth  of  canvas  enough  for 
complete  historical  representation  under  such  titles  as  he 
generally  chose.  No  exception  of  the  kind,  indeed,  can 
be  taken  to  his  Revolt  of  the  Tartars,  which  is  a  noble 
effort  of  historical  painting,  done  with  a  sweep  and  breadth 
of  poetic  imagination  entitling  it,  though  a  history,  to  rank 
also  among  his  prose-phantasies.  Nor  does  the  remark  ap- 
ply to  the  Account  of  the  Williams  Murders,  which  beats 
for  ghastly  power  anything  else  known  in  Newgate  Calen- 
dar literature.  But  the  tendency  to  "  points  "  is  shown  in 
most  of  the  other  papers  in  the  same  sub-class.  Among 
these  The  Philosophy  of  Herodotus  may  be  mentioned  for 
its  singularly  fine  appreciation  of  the  Grecian  father  of 
history,  and  Modern  Greece  for  its  amusing  and  humorous 


xa.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  163 

instructiveness.  Rhetoric  and  Style  are  among  De  Quin- 
cey's  greatest  performances ;  and,  though  in  them  too,  con- 
sidered as  sketches  of  Literary  History,  the  strength  runs 
towards  points  and  specialities,  the  titles  declare  that  be- 
forehand and  indicate  what  the  specialities  are.  The  Cob- 
sars  is,  undoubtedly,  his  most  ambitious  attempt,  all  in  all, 
in  the  historical  department;  and  he  set  great  store  by  it 
himself ;  but  it  cannot,  I  think,  take  rank  among  his  high- 
est productions.  There  are  striking  passages  and  sugges- 
tions in  it ;  but  the  general  effect  is  too  hazy,  many  of  the 
parts  are  hurried,  and  none  of  the  characters  of  the  Em- 
perors stands  out  with  convincing  distinctness  after  that 
of  Julius  Caesar. 

Few  authors  are  so  diflScult  to  represent  by  mere  ex- 
tracts as  De  Quincey,  so  seldom  does  he  complete  a  matter 
within  a  short  space.  The  following,  however,  may  pass 
as  specimens  of  him  in  the  descriptive  and  historical  de- 
partment.    The  second  is  excellent  and  memorable : 

"  First  Sight  op  Dr.  Parr. 

"  Nobody  announced  him ;  and  we  were  left  to  collect  his  name 
from  his  dress  and  his  conversation.  Hence  it  happened  that  for 
some  time  I  was  disposed  to  question  with  myself  whether  this  might 
not  be  Mr.  Bobus  even  (little  as  it  could  be  supposed  to  resemble  him), 
rather  than  Dr.  Parr,  so  much  did  he  contradict  all  my  rational  pre- 
conceptions. '  A  man,'  said  I,  '  who  has  insulted  people  so  outra- 
geously ought  not  to  have  done  this  in  single  reliance  upon  his  pro- 
fessional protections :  a  brave  man,  and  a  man  of  honour,  would  here 
have  carried  about  with  him,  in  his  manner  and  deportment,  some 
such  language  as  this :  "  Do  not  think  that  I  shelter  myself  under  my 
gown  from  the  natural  consequences  of  the  affronts  I  offer :  mortal 
combats  I  am  forbidden,  sir,  as  a  Christian  minister,  to  engage  in ; 
but,  as  I  find  it  impossible  to  refrain  from  occasional  Ucence  of 
tongue,  I  am  very  willing  to  fight  a  few  rounds  in  a  ring  with  any 
gentleman  who  fancies  himself  ill-used." '    Let  me  not  be  misunder- 


164  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

stood ;  I  do  not  contend  that  Dr.  Parr  should  often,  or  regularly,  have 
offered  this  species  of  satisfaction.  But  I  do  insist  upon  it — that  no 
man  should  have  given  the  very  highest  sort  of  provocation  so  wan- 
tonly as  Dr.  Parr  is  recorded  to  have  done,  unless  conscious  that,  in  a 
last  extremity,  he  was  ready,  like  a  brave  man,  to  undertake  a  short 
turn-up,  in  a  private  room,  with  any  person  whatsoever  whom  he  had 
insulted  past  endurance.  A  doctor  who  had  so  often  tempted  (which 
is  a  kind  way  of  saying  had  merited)  a  cudgelling  ought  himself  to 
have  had  some  abiUty  to  cudgel.  Dr.  Johnson  assuredly  would  have 
acted  on  that  principle.  Had  volume  the  second  of  that  same  folio 
with  which  he  floored  Osbum  happened  to  lie  ready  to  the  prostrate 
man's  grasp,  nobody  can  suppose  that  Johnson  would  have  disputed 
Osburn's  right  to  retaliate;  in  which  case  a  regular  succession  of 
rounds  would  have  been  established.  Considerations  such  as  these, 
and  Dr.  Parr's  undeniable  reputation  (granted  even  by  his  most  ad- 
miring biographers)  as  a  sanguinary  flagellator  through  his  long 
career  of  pedagogue,  had  prepared  me — nay,  entitled  me — to  expect 
in  Dr.  Parr  a  huge  carcase  of  a  man,  fourteen  stone  at  the  least. 
Hence,  then,  my  surprise,  and  the  perplexity  I  have  recorded,  when 
the  door  opened,  and  a  little  man,  in  a  most  plebeian  wig,  .  .  .  cut 
his  way  through  the  company,  and  made  for  a  fautoiU  standing  op- 
posite the  fire.  Into  this  he  lunged;  and  then  forthwith,  without 
preface  or  apology,  began  to  open  his  talk  upon  the  room.  Here 
arose  a  new  marvel,  and  a  greater.  If  I  had  been  scandalized  at  Dr. 
Parr's  want  of  thews  and  bulk,  conditions  so  indispensable  for  en- 
acting the  part  of  Sam  Johnson,  much  more,  and  with  better  reason, 
was  I  now  petrified  with  his  voice,  utterance,  gestures,  demeanour. 
Conceive,  reader,  by  way  of  counterpoise  to  the  fine  classical  pronun- 
ciation of  Dr.  Johnson,  an  infantine  lisp — the  worst  I  ever  heard — 
from  the  lips  of  a  man  above  sixty,  and  accompanied  with  all  sorts 
of  ridiculous  grimaces  and  Uttle  stage  gesticulations.  As  he  sat  in 
his  chair,  turning  alternately  to  the  right  and  to  the  left,  that  he 
might  distribute  his  edification  in  equal  proportions  amongst  us,  he 
seemed  the  very  image  of  a  little  French  gossiping  abb6.  Yet  all  I 
have  mentioned  was,  and  seemed  to  be,  a  trifle  by  comparison  with 
the  infinite  pettiness  of  his  matter.  Nothing  did  he  utter  but  little 
shreds  of  calumnious  tattle,  the  most  ineffably  silly  and  frivolous  of 
all  that  was  then  circulating  in  the  Whig  salons  of  London  against 
the  Regent.  ...  He  began  precisely  in  these  words :  '  Oh !  I  shall  tell 


xn.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  165 

you '  (laying  a  stress  upon  the  word  shall,  which  still  further  aided 
the  resemblance  to  a  Frenchman)  '  a  sto-hee '  (lispingly  for  story) 
'about  the  Pince  Wegent'  (such  was  his  nearest  approximation  to 
Prince  Regent).  '  Oh,  the  Pince  Wegent !  the  Pince  Wegent !  what 
a  sad  Pince  Wegent !'  And  so  the  old  babbler  went  on,  sometimes 
wringing  his  hands  in  lamentation,  sometimes  flourishing  them  with 
French  grimaces  and  shrugs  of  shoulders,  sometimes  expanding  and 
contracting  his  fingers  like  a  fan.  After  an  hour's  twaddle  of  this 
scandalous  description,  suddenly  he  rose,  and  hopped  out  of  the  room, 
exclaiming  all  the  way, '  OA,  wAa^  a  PjMce  /  Oh^wJmtaWegentl  Is 
it  a  Wegent,  is  it  a  Pince,  that  you  call  this  man  ?  Oh,  what  a  sad 
Pince!  Did  anybody  ever  hear  of  such  a  sad  Pince? — such  a  sad  We- 
gent— such  a  sad,  sad  Pince  Wegent  ?  Oh,  what  a  Pince  P  &c.,  da  capo. 
Not  without  indignation  did  I  exclaim  to  myself,  on  this  winding  up 
of  the  scene,  'And  so  this,  then,  this  lithping  slandermonger,  and  re- 
tailer of  gossip  fit  rather  for  washer-women  over  their  tea  than  for 
scholars  and  statesmen,  is  the  champion  whom  his  party  would  pro- 
pound as  the  adequate  antagonist  of  Samuel  Johnson  !  Faugh !' .  .  . 
Such  was  my  first  interview  with  Dr.  Parr ;  such  its  issue.  And  now 
let  me  explain  my  drift  in  thus  detailing  its  circumstances.  Some 
people  will  say  the  drift  was  doubtless  to  exhibit  Dr.  Parr  in  a  disad- 
vantageous light — as  a  petty  gossiper  and  a  man  of  mean  personal 
appearance.  No,  by  no  means.  Far  from  it.  I,  that  write  this  paper, 
have  myself  a  mean  personal  appearance ;  and  I  love  men  of  mean 
appearance.  .  .  .  Dr.  Parr,  therefore,  lost  nothing  in  my  esteem  by 
showing  a  meanish  exterior.  Yet  even  this  was  worth  mentioning, 
and  had  a  value  in  reference  to  my  present  purpose.  I  like  Dr. 
Parr ;  I  may  say  even  that  I  love  him,  for  some  noble  qualities  of 
heart  that  really  did  belong  to  him,  and  were  continually  breaking 
out  in  the  midst  of  his  singular  infirmities.  But  this,  or  a  far  nobler 
moral  character  than  Dr.  Parr's,  can  offer  no  excuse  for  giving  a  false 
elevation  to  his  intellectual  pretensions,  and  raising  him  to  a  level 
which  he  will  be  found  incapable  of  keeping  when  the  props  of  par- 
tial friendship  are  withdrawn." — Works,Y.  36-43. 

"Summary  View  op  the  History  op  Greek  Literature. 
"  There  were  two  groups  or  clusters  of  Grecian  wits,  two  deposits 
or  stratifications  of  the  national  genius ;  and  these  were  about  a  cen- 
tury apart.    What  makes  them  specially  rememberable  is  the  fact 


166  DE  QCrmCEY,  [chap. 

that  each  of  these  brilliant  clusters  had  gathered  separately  about 
that  man  as  their  central  pivot  who,  even  apart  from  thia  relation  to 
the  literature,  was  otherwise  the  leading  spirit  of  his  age.  .  .  .  Who 
were  they  ?  The  one  was  Pekicles,  the  other  was  Alexander  of 
Macedon.  Except  Themistocles,  who  may  be  ranked  as  senior  to 
Pericles  by  one  generation  (or  thirty-three  years),  in  the  whole  deduc- 
tion of  Grecian  annals  no  other  public  man,  statesman,  captain-gen- 
eral, administrator  of  the  national  resources,  can  be  mentioned  as 
approaching  to  these  two  men  in  splendour  of  reputation,  or  even 
in  real  merit.  Pisistratus  was  too  far  back ;  Alcibiades,  who  might 
(chronologically  speaking)  have  been  the  son  of  Pericles,  was  too  un- 
steady and  (according  to  Mr.  Coleridge's  coinage)  '  unreliable,'  or  per- 
haps, in  more  correct  English,  too  '  unrelyuponahle.''  Thus  far  our 
purpose  prospers.  No  man  can  pretend  to  forget  two  such  centres 
as  Pericles  for  the  elder  group,  or  Alexander  of  Macedon  (the  '  strong 
he-goat '  of  Jewish  prophecy)  for  the  junior.  Round  these  two  fod, 
in  two  different  but  adjacent  centuries,  gathered  the  total  starry 
heavens,  the  galaxy,  the  Pantheon  of  Grecian  intellect.  .  .  .  That  we 
may  still  more  severely  search  the  relations  in  all  points  between  the 
two  systems,  let  us  assign  the  chronological  locus  of  each,  because 
that  will  furnish  another  element  towards  the  exact  distribution  of 
the  chart  representing  the  motion  and  the  oscillations  of  human 
genius.  Pericles  had  a  very  long  administration.  He  was  Prime- 
minister  of  Athens  for  upwards  of  one  entire  generation.  He  died 
in  the  year  429  before  Christ,  and  in  a  very  early  stage  of  that  great 
Peloponnesian  war  which  was  the  one  sole  intestine  war  for  Greece, 
affecting  every  nook  and  angle  in  the  land.  Now,  in  this  long  public 
life  of  Pericles,  we  are  at  liberty  to  fix  on  any  year  as  his  chronolog- 
ical loom.  On  good  reasons,  not  called  for  in  this  place,  we  fix  on 
the  year  444  before  Christ.  This  is  too  remarkable  to  be  forgotten. 
Four,  four,  four,  what  in  some  games  of  cards  is  called  a  ^prial ' 
(we  presume,  by  an  elision  of  the  first  vowel,  for  parial),  forms  an  era 
which  no  man  can  forget.  It  was  the  fifteenth  year  before  the  death 
of  Pericles,  and  not  far  from  the  bisecting  year  of  his  political  life. 
Now,  passing  to  the  other  system,  the  locus  of  Alexander  is  quite  as 
remarkable,  as  little  liable  to  be  forgotten  when  once  indicated,  and 
more  easily  determined,  because  selected  from  a  narrower  range  of 
choice.  The  exact  chronological  locus  of  Alexander  is  333  years  be- 
fore Christ.    Everybody  knows  how  brief  was  the  career  of  this  great 


XII.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  167 

man :  it  terminated  in  the  year  323  before  Christ.  But  the  anrms 
mirabilis  of  his  public  life,  the  most  eflfective  and  productive  year 
throughout  his  Oriental  anabasis,  was  the  year  833  before  Christ. 
Here  we  have  another  ^prial,''  a  prial  of  threes,  for  the  locus  of  Alex- 
ander, if  properly  corrected.  Thus  far  the  elements  are  settled,  the 
chronological  longitude  and  latitude  of  the  two  great  planetary  sys- 
tems into  which  the  Greek  literature  breaks  up  and  distributes  itself : 
444  and  333  are  the  two  central  years  for  the  two  systems ;  allowing, 
therefore,  an  interspace  of  111  years  between  the  foci  of  each.  .  .  . 
Passing  onwards  from  Pericles,  you  find  that  all  the  rest  in  his  sys- 
tem were  men  in  the  highest  sense  creative,  absolutely  setting  the 
very  first  example,  each  in  his  particular  walk  of  composition ;  them- 
selves without  previous  models,  and  yet  destined  every  man  of  them 
to  become  models  for  all  after-generations ;  themselves  without  fa- 
thers or  mothers,  and  yet  having  all  posterity  for  their  children. 
First  come  the  three  men  divini  spiritus,  under  a  heavenly  afSatus, 
.^schylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  the  creators  of  Tragedy  out  of  a  vil- 
lage mummery ;  next  comes  Aristophanes,  who  breathed  the  breath 
of  life  into  Comedy ;  then  comes  the  great  philosopher,  Anaxagoras, 
who  first  theorized  successfully  on  man  and  the  world.  Next  come, 
whether  great  or  not,  the  still  more  famous  philosophers,  Socrates, 
Plato,  Zenophon ;  then  comes,  leaning  upon  Pericles,  as  sometimes 
Pericles  leaned  upon  him,  the  divine  artist,  Phidias ;  and  behind  this 
immortal  man  walk  Herodotus  and  Thucydides.  What  a  procession 
to  Eleusis  would  these  men  have  formed !  what  a  frieze,  if  some  great 
artist  could  arrange  it  as  dramatically  as  Chaucer  has  arranged  the 
Pilgrimage  to  Canterbury !  .  .  .  Now,  let  us  step  on  a  hundred  years 
forward.  We  are  now  within  hail  of  Alexander,  and  a  brilliant  con- 
sistory of  Grecian  men  that  is  by  which  he  is  surrounded.  There  are 
now  exquisite  misters  of  the  more  refined  comedy ;  there  are,  again, 
great  philosophers,  for  all  the  great  schools  are  represented  by  able 
successors ;  and,  above  all  others,  there  is  the  one  philosopher  who 
played  with  men's  minds  (according  to  Lord  Bacon's  comparison)  as 
freely  as  ever  his  princely  pupil  with  their  persons — there  is  Aris- 
totle. There  are  great  orators ;  and,  above  all  others,  there  is  that 
orator  whom  succeeding  generations  (wisely  or  not)  have  adopted  as 
the  representative  name  for  what  is  conceivable  as  oratorical  perfec- 
tion—  there  is  Demosthenes.  Aristotle  and  Demosthenes  are  in 
themselves  bulwarks  of  power ;  many  hosts  lie  in  those  two  names. 


168  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

For  artists,  again,  to  range  against  Phidias,  there  is  Lysippus  the 
sculptor,  and  there  is  Apelles  the  painter ;  for  great  captains  and 
masters  of  strategic  art,  there  is  Alexander  himself,  with  a  glit- 
tering cortege  of  general  officers,  well  qualified  to  wear  the  crowns 
which  they  will  win,  and  to  head  the  dynasties  which  they  will  found. 
Historians  there  are  now,  as  in  that  former  age ;  and,  upon  the  whole, 
it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  '  turn-out '  is  showy  and  imposing.  .  .  . 
Before  comparing  the  second  'deposit'  (geologically  speaking)  of 
Grecian  genius  with  the  first,  let  us  consider  what  it  was  (if  anything) 
that  connected  them.  Here,  reader,  we  would  wish  to  put  a  question. 
Saving  your  presence.  Did  you  ever  see  what  is  called  a  dumb-bell  ? 
We  have ;  and  know  it  by  more  painful  evidence  than  that  of  sight. 
You,  therefore,  0  reader !  if  personally  cognisant  of  dumb-bells,  we 
will  remind,  if  not,  we  will  inform,  that  it  is  a  cylindrical  bar  of  iron 
or  lead,  issuing  at  each  end  in  a  globe  of  the  same  metal,  and  usually 
it  is  sheathed  in  green  baize.  .  .  .  Now,  reader,  it  is  under  this  image 
of  the  dumb-bell  that  we  couch  our  allegory.  Those  globes  at  each 
end  are  the  two  systems  or  separate  clusters  of  Greek  hterature; 
and  that  cylinder  which  connects  them  is  the  long  man  that  ran  into 
each  system,  binding  the  two  together.  Who  was  that?  It  was 
Isocrates.  Oreat  we  cannot  call  him  in  conscience ;  and  therefore, 
by  way  of  compromise,  we  call  him  long,  which,  in  one  sense,  he  cer- 
tainly was ;  for  he  lived  through  four-and-twenty  Olympiads,  each 
containing  four  solar  years.  He  narrowly  escaped  being  a  hundred 
years  old ;  and,  though  that  did  not  carry  him  from  centre  to  centre, 
yet,  as  each  system  might  be  supposed  to  protend  a  radius  each  way 
'  of  twenty  years,  he  had,  in  fact,  a  full  personal  cognisance  (and  pretty 
equally)  of  the  two  systems,  remote  as  they  were,  which  composed 
the  total  world  of  Grecian  genius. .  .  .  Now,  then,  reader,  you  have 
arrived  at  that  station  from  which  you  overlook  the  whole  of  Greek 
literature,  as  a  few  explanations  will  soon  convince  you.  Where  is 
Homer  ?  where  is  Hesiod  ?  you  ask ;  where  is  Pindar  ?  Homer  and 
Hesiod  lived  1000  years  b.c,  or,  by  the  lowest  computation,  near  900. 
For  anything  that  we  know,  they  may  have  lived  with  Tubal  Cain. 
At  all  events,  they  belong  to  no  power  or  agency  that  set  in  motion 
the  age  of  Pericles,  or  that  operated  on  that  age.  Pindar,  again,  was 
a  solitary  emanation  of  some  unknown  influences,  at  Thebes,  more 
than  five  hundred  years  before  Christ.  He  may  be  referred  to  the 
same  age  as  Pythagoras,    These  are  all  that  can  be  cited  before  Per- 


xn.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  169 

icles.  Next,  for  the  ages  after  Alexander,  it  is  certain  that  Greece 
Proper  was  so  much  broken  in  spirit  by  the  loss  of  her  autonomy, 
dating  from  that  era,  as  never  again  to  have  rallied  suflBciently  to 
produce  a  single  man  of  genius — not  one  solitary  writer  who  acted 
as  a  power  upon  the  national  mind.  Callimachus  was  nobody,  and 
not  decidedly  Grecian.  Theocritus,  a  man  of  real  genius  in  a  limit- 
ed way,  is  a  Grecian  in  that  sense  only  according  to  which  an  Anglo- 
American  is  an  Englishman.  Besides  that,  one  swallow  does  not 
make  a  summer.  Of  any  other  writers,  above  all  others  of  Menan- 
der,  apparently  a  man  of  divine  genius,  we  possess  only  a  few  wrecks ; 
and  of  Anacreon,  who  must  have  been  a  poet  of  original  power,  we 
do  not  certainly  know  that  we  have  even  any  wrecks.  Of  those 
which  pass  under  his  name  not  merely  the  authorship,  but  the  era,  is 
very  questionable  indeed.  Plutarch  and  Lucian,  the  unlearned  read- 
er must  understand,  both  belong  to  post-Christian  ages.  And,  for 
all  the  Greek  emigrants  who  may  have  written  histories,  such  as  we 
now  value  for  their  matter  more  than  for  their  execution,  one  and  all, 
they  belong  too  much  to  Roman  civilization  that  we  should  ever 
think  of  connecting  them  with  native  Greek  literature.  Polybius  in 
the  days  of  the  second  Scipio,  Dion  Cassius  and  Appian  in  the  acme 
of  Roman  civility,  are  no  more  Grecian  authors  because  they  wrote 
in  Greek  than  the  Emperors  Marcus  Antoninus  and  Julian  were  other 
than  Romans  because,  from  monstrous  coxcombry,  they  chose  to 
write  in  Greek  their  barren  memoranda." —  Works,  X.  242-256. 

It  would  be  hopeless  to  seek  to  represent  by  extracts, 
even  in  this  inadequate  fashion,  that  very  characteristic 
portion  of  De  Quincey's  writings  of  the  generally  histori- 
cal kind  which  we  have  called  his  Historical  Speculations 
and  Researches.  They  must  be  read  in  their  integrity. 
The  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals,  Cicero,  Judas  Iscariot,  The 
Essenes,  and  The  Pagan  Oracles,  may  be  especially  recom- 
mended. They  are  admirable  specimens  of  his  boldness 
and  acuteness  in  questioning  received  historical  beliefs, 
and  of  his  ingenuity  in  working  out  novelties  or  para- 
doxes. The  drift  of  The  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals  is 
that  the  Romans,  and  indeed  the  ancients  generally,  had 
M    8* 


110  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

no  such  regular  meal  early  in  the  day  as  our  modern 
breakfast,  and  that  a  whole  coil  of  important  social  con- 
sequences depended  on  that  one  fact.  In  his  Cicero  he 
propounds  a  view  of  his  own  as  to  the  character  of  the 
famous  Roman  orator  and  wit  and  his  function  in  the 
struggle  between  Caesar  and  Pompey.  The  paradox  in 
Judas  Iscariot  is,  that  Judas  was  not  the  vulgar  traitor  of 
the  popular  conception,  but  a  headstrong  fanatic,  who,  hav- 
ing missed  the  true  spiritual  purport  of  Christ's  mission, 
and  attached  himself  to  Christ  in  the  expectation  of  a  po- 
litical revolution  to  be  effected  by  Christ's  assumption  of 
a  temporal  kingship  or  championship  of  the  Jewish  race, 
had  determined  to  precipitate  matters  by  leaving  Christ 
no  room  for  hesitation  or  delay.  In  The  Essenes  the  at- 
tempt is  to  show  that  there  was  no  real  or  independent 
sect  of  that  name  among  the  Jews,  all  the  confusion  to 
the  contrary  having  originated  in  a  rascally  invention  of 
the  historian  Josephus.  In  The  Pagan  Oracles  there  is  a 
contradiction  of  the  tradition  of  a  sudden  paralysis  of  the 
Pagan  ritual  on  the  first  appearance  of  Christianity,  and 
a  castigation  of  the  early  Christian  writers  for  having  in- 
vented the  pious  lie. 

II.  Speculative,  Didactic,  and  Critical, 

While  a  speculative  and  critical  element  is  discernible 
in  almost  all  the  papers  now  dismissed  as  in  the  main  bi- 
ographical or  historical,  and  while  some  of  the  historical 
papers  were  regarded  by  De  Quincey  himself  as  typical 
examples  of  the  speculative  essay,  it  is  of  a  different  set 
of  his  papers  that  our  classification  obliges  us  to  take  ac- 
count under  the  present  heading.  They  also  fall  into  sub- 
divisions : 

I.  Metaphysical, Psychological,  and  Ethical: — In  this  subdivi-. 


XII.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND   REVIEW.  171 

Bion,  itself  composite,  but  answering  to  what  passes  under  the  name 
of  Philosophy  in  a  general  sense,  may  be  included  the  following : 
System  of  the  Heavens  as  Revealed  by  Lord  Mosse^s  Telescopes  ;  various 
papers  or  portions  of  papers  relating  to  Kant,  e.  g.,  part  of  the  Let- 
ters to  a  Yowng  Man  wlwse  JEducation  has  been  Neglected,  the  paper 
entitled  KarU  in  his  Miscellaneous  Essays,  and  the  translation  of  Kant's 
Idea  of  a  Universal  History  on  a  Cosmopolitical  Plan ;  the  scraps 
entitled  Dreaming  and  The  Palimpsest  of  the  Human  Brain,  in  the 
"Sequel  to  the  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium-eater  "  (Vol.  XVI.) ; 
some  of  the  scraps  in  the  "Notes  from  the  Pocket-book  of  a  Late 
Opium-eater,"  e.g.,  On  Suicide;  and  the  articles  entitled  Plato's  lie- 
public.  Glance  at  the  Works  of  Mackintosh,  Casuistry,  On  War,  Na- 
tional Temperance  Movements,  Presence  of  Mind,  and  The  Juggernaut 
of  Social  Life. 

IT.  Theological  : — Protestantism,  Miracles  as  Subjects  of  Testimo- 
ny, On  Christianity  as  an  Organ  of  Political  Movement,  and  Memorial 
Chronology  on  a  New  and  more  Apprehensible  System.  This  last,  in- 
cluded in  Vol.  XVI.,  is  an  unfinished  paper,  posthumously  published 
from  the  author's  manuscript;  and  it  contains  little  more  than  a 
clever  and  humorous  introduction,  in  the  form  of  an  address  to  a 
young  lady,  with  the  beginning  of  what  was  intended  to  be  a  piece 
of  Biblical  criticism. 

III.  English  Politics  : — A  Tories  Account  of  Toryism,  Whiggism, 
and  Radicalism;  On  the  Political  Parties  of  Modem  England;  Fal- 
sification of  English  History. 

rV.  Political  Economy  : — Logic  of  Political  Economy ,  Dialogues 
of  Three  Templars  on  Political  Economy ;  the  scraps  entitled  Mal- 
thus  and  Measure  of  Vahie  in  the  "  Notes  from  the  Pocket-book  of  a 
Late  Opium-eater ;"  and  the  article  entitled  California. 

V.  Literary  Theory  and  Criticism: — The  large  essays  entitled 
Rhetoric  and  Style  may  be  here  noted  again ;  and  there  may  be  as- 
sociated with  them,  as  expositions  of  general  literary  theory,  the  Let- 
ters to  a  Young  Man  whose  Education  has  been  Neglected,  and  the  ar- 
ticle entitled  Language  (which,  despite  the  title,  is  really  on  Style). 
The  more  special  articles  of  the  same  sort  form  a  numerous  series. 
Arranged  in  the  chronological  order  of  their  subjects,  they  are  as 
follows :  Theory  of  Greek  Tragedy,  The  Antigone  of  Sophocles,  and 
The  ThAan  Sphinx;  On  the  Knocking  at  the  Gate  in  Macbeth;  the 
short  critical  paper  entitled  Milton  (in  Vol.  VI.),  and  the  other  en> 
37 


1V2  DE  QFINCEY.  [chap. 

titled  Milton  versus  SmUhey  and  Landor  (in  Vol.  XI.) ;  the  review 
entitled  Schlosser's  Literary  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century ;  the 
two  critical  articles  on  Pope,  entitled  Alexander  Pope  (in  Vol.  VIII.) 
and  Lord  Carlisle  on  Pope  (in  Vol.  XII.) ;  the  article  Oliver  Gold- 
smith (slightly  biographical,  but  chiefly  critical) ;  the  paper  on  Car- 
lyle's  Translation  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  reprinted  under  the  title  Ooethe 
Reflected  in  his  Novel  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  with  omission  of  the  re- 
marks on  the  translator  (in  Vol.  XII.) ;  the  sketch  John  Paul  Fred- 
erick Richter,  prefixed  to  the  translated  "  Analects  from  Richter  "  (in 
Vol.  XHL);  the  essay  On  WordswortKs  Poetry;  the  Notes  on  God- 
win and  Foster,  the  slight  little  paper  entitled  John  Keats,  and  the 
Notes  on  Walter  Savage  Landor.  To  these  may  be  added  Ortho- 
graphic Mutineers,  The  Art  of  Conversation,  the  scrap  Walladmor, 
and  one  or  two  of  the  scraps  called  "  Notes  from  the  Pocket-book 
of  a  Late  Opium-eater." 

To  the  harder  varieties  of  Speculative  Philosophy,  it 
will  be  observed,  De  Quincey  has  contributed  less  of  an 
original  kind  than  might  have  been  expected  from  his 
known  private  passion  for  metaphysical  studies.  If  we 
except  his  System  of  the  Heavens,  which  hints  metaphys- 
ical ideas  in  the  form  of  a  splendid  cosmological  vision, 
and  his  Palimpsest  of  the  Human  Brain,  which  is  full  of 
psychological  suggestion,  he  seems  to  have  satisfied  him- 
self in  this  department  by  reports  from  Kant  and  recom- 
mendations of  Kant  to  English  attention.  The  accuracy 
of  some  of  his  statements  about  Kant,  and  indeed  of  his 
knowledge  of  Kant,  has  been  called  in  question  of  late ; 
but  it  remains  to  his  credit  that,  in  a  singularly  bleak  and 
vapid  period  of  the  native  British  philosophizing,  he  had 
contracted  such  an  admiration,  all  in  all,  for  the  great 
German  transcendentalist.  His  translation  of  Kant's  Idea 
of  a  Universal  History  was  a  feat  in  itself.  That  essay 
remains  to  this  day  the  clearest  argument  for  the  possi- 
bility of  a  Science  of  History  since  Vico  propounded  the 
Scienza  Nuova  ;  and  to  have  perceived  the  importance  of 


III.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  178 

sucli  an  essay  in  the  year  1824  was  to  be  in  possession  of 
a  philosophical  notion  of  great  value  long  before  it  was 
popular  in  Britain.  That  De  Quincey  contented  him- 
self so  much  with  mere  accounts  of  Kant  personally,  and 
literary  glimpses  of  the  nature  of  his  speculations,  may 
have  been  due  to  the  fact  that  original  philosophizing  of 
the  metaphysical  and  psychological  kinds  was  not  wanted 
in  magazines  and  would  not  pay.  He  made  amends,  how- 
ever, as  our  list  will  have  shown,  by  a  considerable  quan- 
tity of  writing  on  subjects  of  Speculative  Ethics.  His 
best  essay  of  this  kind  is  that  entitled  Casuistry.  It  was 
a  favourite  idea  of  De  Quincey's  that  Moral  Philosophy 
in  recent  times,  especially  in  Protestant  countries,  has  run 
too  much  upon  generalities,  avoiding  too  much  those  very 
ccises  of  constant  recurrence  in  life  about  which  diflBculties 
are  likely  to  arise  in  practical  conduct.  Accordingly,  in 
this  essay,  there  is  a  discussion  of  duelling  and  the  laws 
of  honour,  the  legitimacy  of  suicide,  proper  behaviour  to 
servants,  the  limits  of  the  rule  of  veracity,  &c.,  &c.,  all 
with  lively  historical  illustrations.  In  the  paper  On  War 
the  necessary  permanence  of  that  agency  in  the  world  is 
asserted  strongly,  and  a  certain  character  of  nobleness  and 
beneficence  claimed  for  it.  There  is  less  of  dissent  from 
current  philanthropy  in  the  article  on  Temperance  Move- 
ments ;  but  it  will  not  give  entire  satisfaction.  The  arti- 
cle on  Plato's  Republic  is  a  virulent  attack  upon  a  phil- 
osopher towards  whom  we  should  have  expected  to  see 
De  Quincey  standing  in  an  attitude  of  discipleship  and 
veneration.  This  is  owing  chiefly  to  De  Quincey's  disgust 
with  the  moral  heresies,  in  the  matter  of  marriage  and  the 
like,  on  which  Plato  so  coolly  professes  to  found  his  im- 
aginary commonwealth ;  and  it  is  possible  that,  had  he 
been  treating  Plato  in  respect  of  the  sum  total  of  his  phil- 


174  DE  QUmCEY.  [chap. 

osophic  and  literary  merits,  we  should  have  had  a  much 
more  admiring  estimate.  As  it  is,  one  has  to  pity  De 
Quincey  rather  than  Plato  in  this  unfortunate  interview. 
He  looks  as  petulant  and  small  in  his  attack  on  Plato  as 
he  did  in  his  attack  on  Goethe. 

The  expressly  theological  papers  of  De  Quincey,  with 
passages  innumerable  through  his  other  writings,  show 
that  he  took  his  stand  on  established  Christian  orthodoxy. 
He  avowed  his  belief  in  a  miraculous  revelation  from 
God  to  mankind,  begun  and  continued  in  the  history  of 
the  Jewish  race,  and  consummated  in  the  life  of  Christ 
and  in  the  diffusion  of  Christianity  by  the  Apostles.  As 
a  reasoned  piece  of  Christian  apologetics  his  answer  to 
Hume's  argument,  entitled  Miracles  as  Subjects  of  Testi- 
mony y  does  not  seem  to  have  won  much  regard  from 
theologians,  and,  though  very  subtle,  is  certainly  deficient 
in  the  homely  quality  which  Hobbes  called  bite.  His 
own  religious  faith,  indeed,  appears  to  have  been  very 
much  of  the  nature  of  an  inherited  sentiment,  independent 
of  reasoning,  and  which  he  would  not  let  reasoning 
disturb.  In  one  respect,  too,  his  theology  was  of  what 
many  theologians  now  would  call  a  narrow  and  old- 
fashioned  kind.  There  is  no  trace  in  him  of  that  notion 
of  a  universal  religious  inspiration  among  the  nations,  and 
so  of  a  certain  respectability,  greater  or  less,  in  all  mythol- 
ogies, which  has  been  fostered  by  the  modem  science 
of  religions.  On  the  contrary,  Christianity  is  with  him 
the  single  divine  revelation  in  the  world,  and  he  thinks 
and  speaks  of  the  Pagan  religions,  in  the  style  of  the  old- 
fashioned  theology,  as  simply  false  religions,  horrid  re- 
ligions, inventions  of  the  spirit  of  evil.  How  this  is  to  be 
reconciled  with  his  wide  range  of  historical  sympathy, 
and  especially  with  his  admiration  of  the  achievements 


xn.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  175 

of  the  Greek  intellect  and  the  grandeur  of  the  Roman 
character,  it  might  be  diflScult  to  say.  Probably  it  was 
because  he  distinguished  between  those  noble  and  ad- 
mirable developments  which  human  nature  could  work 
out  for  itself,  and  which  therefore  belong  to  humanity  as 
such,  and  the  more  rare  and  spiritual  possibilities  which 
he  believed  actual  revelation  had  woven  into  the  web  of 
humanity,  and  which  were  to  be  regarded  as  gifts  from 
the  supernatural.  At  all  events,  the  matter  stands  as  has 
been  stated.  In  the  same  way,  Mahometanism  figures  in 
his  regard  as  of  little  worth,  monotheistic  certainly,  and 
therefore  superior  to  the  Pagan  creeds,  but  a  spurious 
religion  and  partly  stolen.  Further,  De  Quincey's  Chris- 
tianity declares  itself  as  deliberately  of  the  Protestant 
species.  With  much  respect  for  Roman  Catholicism,  he 
yet  repudiates  it  as  in  great  measure  a  corruption  of  the 
original  system,  which  original  system  he  finds  reproduced 
in  the  Protestantism  of  the  sixteenth  century.  His  article 
entitled  Protestantism  is  an  exposition  of  his  views  in  that 
matter,  and  is  altogether  a  very  able  and  important  paper. 
If  he  has  seemed  narrow  hitherto  in  his  philosophy  of 
religion,  here,  once  within  the  bounds  of  his  Protestant- 
ism, and  engaged  in  defining  Protestantism,  he  becomes 
broad  enough.  "  The  self-suflBcingness  of  the  Bible  and  the 
right  of  private  judgment "  are,  he  maintains,  "  the  two 
great  characters  in  which  Protestantism  commences,"  and 
the  doctrines  by  which  it  distinguishes  itself  from  the 
Church  of  Rome.  Bound  up  in  these  doctrines,  he  main- 
tains, is  the  duty  of  absolute  religious  toleration ;  and  by 
this  principle  of  absolute  religious  toleration,  the  right  of 
the  individual  to  think,  print,  and  publish  what  he  pleases, 
he  abides  with  exemplary  fidelity  through  all  his  writings, 
even  while  in  skirmish  with  the  free-thinkers  for  whonj 


176  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

he  has  the  strongest  personal  disgust.  But  this  is  not 
all.  He  abjures  Bibliolatry,  or  that  kind  of  respect  for 
the  letter  of  the  Bible  which  is  founded  on  the  notion 
of  verbal  inspiration,  denying  it  to  be  a  necessary  tenet 
of  Protestantism,  or  to  be  possible,  indeed,  for  any  scholar- 
ly understanding.  It  is  not  only,  he  maintains,  that  the 
notion  of  literal  or  verbal  inspiration  is  broken  down  at 
once  by  recollection  of  the  corruptions  of  the  original 
text  of  the  Scriptures,  their  various  readings,  and  the  fact 
that  it  is  only  in  translations  that  the  Scriptures  exist  for 
the  masses  of  mankind  in  all  countries.  He  addresses 
himself  more  emphatically  to  the  alleged  palpable  errors 
in  the  substance  and  teachings  of  the  Bible,  its  violations 
of  history  and  chronology,  its  inconsistencies  with  modern 
science.  Here  he  refuses  at  once  that  method  of  recon- 
ciling science  with  Scripture  which  proceeds  by  torture 
of  texts  into  meanings  different  from  those  which  they 
bore  to  the  Hebrews  or  the  Greeks  who  first  read  them. 
His  bold  principle  is,  that  Science  and  the  Bible  cannot 
be  reconciled  in  such  matters,  and  that  the  desire  to  recon- 
cile them  indicates  a  most  gross  and  carnal  misconception 
of  the  very  idea  of  a  divine  revelation.  The  principle 
may  be  given  in  his  own  words : 

"  It  is  an  obligation  resting  upon  the  Bible,  if  it  is  to  be  consistent 
with  itself,  that  it  should  reftise  to  teach  science ;  and,  if  the  Bible 
ever  had  taught  any  one  art,  science,  or  process  of  life,  it  would  have 
been  asked,  Is  a  divine  mission  abandoned  suddenly  for  a  human 
mission?  By  what  caprice  is  this  one  science  taught,  and  others 
not  ?  Or  these  two,  suppose,  and  not  all  ?  But  an  objection  even 
deadlier  would  have  followed.  It  is  clear  as  is  the  purpose  of  day- 
light that  the  wjiole  body  of  the  arts  and  sciences  comprises  one  vast 
machinery  for  the  irritation  and  development  of  the  human  intellect. 
For  this  end  they  exist.  To  see  God,  therefore,  descending  into  the 
arena  of  science,  and  contending,  as  it  were,  for  his  own  prizes,  by 


xu.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  Ill 

teaching  science  in  the  Bible,  would  be  to  see  him  intercepting  from 
their  self-evident  destination  (viz.,  man's  intellectual  benefit)  his  own 
problems  by  solving  them  himself.  No  spectacle  could  more  dis- 
honour the  divine  idea,  could  more  injure  man  under  the  mask  of 
aiding  him.  27ie  Bible  must  not  teach  anything  that  man  can  teach 
himself.*' 

The  revelation  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  is  to  be 
regarded,  then,  according  to  De  Quincey,  as  a  leaven  of 
truths  purely  moral  and  spiritual,  sent  into  the  world  by 
miracle  precisely  because  man  could  never  have  found 
them  out  for  himself,  with  a  careful  abstinence  from  any 
mixture  of  matter  of  ordinary  knowledge  in  advance  of 
what  was  already  existent,  and  therefore  with  an  adoption 
of  all  existing  historical  and  scientific  phrases  and  tradi- 
tions. Hence  Bibliolatry,  in  the  sense  of  a  belief  in  the 
immaculate  correctness  of  the  language  and  statements 
of  the  Bible  on  all  subjects  whatsoever,  was  no  tenet  of 
genuine  Christianity,  secure  as  every  Christian  ought  to 
be  that,  whatever  changes  of  conception  on  such  subjects 
as  the  antiquity  of  the  human  race,  or  the  system  of  the 
physical  universe,  might  come  with  the  progress  of  the 
human  intelligence,  the  supernatural  leaven  would  im- 
pregnate them  as  they  came,  and  go  on  working.  In  this 
doctrine,  of  which  De  Quincey  seems  to  have  meditated 
a  particular  application  in  his  unfinished  papers  entitled 
Memorial  Chronology,  he  was  substantially  at  one  with 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth.  He  was  at  one  with  them, 
too,  in  his  affection  for  Church  Establishments.  In  re- 
markable difference  from  his  favourite  Milton,  who  re- 
garded the  incorporation  of  Church  and  State  as  the  cause 
of  the  vitiation  of  the  supernatural  leaven  in  the  world, 
and  scowled  back  with  hatred  on  the  Emperor  Constan- 
tino as  the  beginner  of  that  mischief,  De  Quincey  con- 


1*78  DE  QUINCEY.  c3hap. 

fessed  to  a  special  kindness  for  Constantine,  precisely  be- 
cause that  Emperor  had  conceived  the  idea  of  converting 
Christianity  into  a  political  agency.  It  was  Constantine 
who  had  carried  Christian  teaching  into  effect  in  such  in- 
stitutions as  hospitals  and  public  provision  for  the  poor ; 
and  the  prospects  of  the  world  for  the  future  were  bound 
up  with  the  possible  extensions  of  the  political  influence 
of  Christianity  in  similar  directions.  That  is  the  subject 
of  the  essay  entitled  On  Christianity  as  an  Organ  of  Po- 
litical Movement.  In  short,  De  Quincey  is  to  be  remem- 
bered, in  his  religious  relations,  as  a  staunch  Church-of- 
England  man  of  the  broad  school,  not  given  to  High- 
Church  sacerdotalism,  though  with  an  aesthetic  liking  in 
his  own  case  for  a  comely  ritual. 

In  politics  De  Quincey  was  an  English  Tory.  In  the 
two  papers  entitled  A  Tory's  Account  of  Toryism,  Whig- 
gism,  and  Radicalism,  and  On  the  Political  Parties  of  Mod- 
em England,  he  avows  his  partisanship.  Toryism  asserts 
itself  also  in  the  article  on  Dr.  Parr,  and  tinges  some  of 
the  other  papers.  It  is  interesting,  indeed,  to  observe  how 
much  of  the  *'  John  Bull  element,"  as  Mr.  Page  calls  it, 
there  was,  all  in  all,  in  the  feeble  little  man.  His  patriot- 
ism was  of  the  old  type  of  the  days  of  Pitt  and  Nelson. 
He  exulted  in  the  historic  glories  of  England  and  her  im- 
perial ascendency  in  so  many  parts  of  the  globe,  and  would 
have  had  her  do  battle  for  any  punctilio  of  honour,  as  read- 
ily as  for  any  more  visible  interest,  in  her  dealings  with 
foreigners.  He  had  a  good  deal  of  the  old  English  anti- 
Gallican  prejudice ;  and,  though  he  has  done  justice,  over 
and  over  again,  to  some  of  the  finer  characteristics  of  the 
French,  the  total  effect  of  his  remarks  on  the  French,  po- 
litically and  intellectually,  is  irritating  to  the  admirers  of 
that  gre^t  natioij,    He  knew  them  only  through  books  or  by 


X1I.J  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  119 

casual  observation  of  stray  Frenchmen  he  met;  for  he  was 
never  out  of  the  British  Islands,  and  never  experienced 
that  sudden  awakening  of  a  positive  affection  for  the 
French  which  comes  infallibly  from  even  a  single  visit  to 
their  lightsome  capital.  On  the  other  hand,  though  Scot- 
land was  his  home  for  so  large  a  part  of  his  life,  he  seems 
never  to  have  contracted  th^  least  sympathy  with  anything 
distinctively  Scottish.  Even  his  Toryism  was  specially 
English  or  South-British.  But,  like  all  other  parts  of  his 
creed,  his  Toryism  was  of  a  highly  intellectual  kind,  with 
features  of  its  own.  In  such  questions,  for  example,  as 
that  of  the  continuance  of  flogging  and  other  brutal  forms 
of  punishment  in  the  army  and  navy  and  elsewhere,  he 
parted  company  with  the  ordinary  mass  of  Tories,  leaving 
his  curse  with  them  in  that  particular,  and  went  with  the 
current  of  Radical  sentiment  and  opinion.  How  far  he 
was  carried,  by  his  candour  of  intellect  and  depth  and  ac- 
curacy of  scholarship,  from  the  ordinary  rut  of  party  com- 
monplace, may  be  judged  also  from  his  little  paper  entitled 
Falsification  of  English  History.  It  is  a  gallant  little  pa- 
per, and  one  of  the  best  rebukes  in  our  language  to  that 
systematic  vilification  of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  the  Eng- 
lish Commonwealth,  and  the  Reign  of  Cromwell,  which  has 
come  down  in  the  Anglican  mind  as  an  inheritance  from 
the  Restoration,  and  still  vulgarises  so  much  of  our  schol- 
arship and  our  literature. 

The  Dialogues  of  the  Three  Templars  and  the  Logic  of 
Political  Economy  are  De  Quincey's  chief  contributions  to 
the  literature  of  Economic  Science.  As  to  the  literary 
deftness  of  the  essay  and  the  treatise  there  is  no  doubt. 
For  cutting  lucidity  of  exposition  and  beauty  of  style  they 
are  to  be  envied  by  most  writers  on  Political  Economy. 
This  seems  to  have  been  felt  by  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill,  who 


180  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

mentions  De  Quincey  with  respect,  and  uses  quotations 
from  him  thankfully  in  parts  of  his  standard  work.  The 
question  rather  is,  whether  De  Quincey  has  any  title,  such 
as  he  himself  seemed  to  claim,  to  the  character  of  an  orig- 
inal thinker  in  the  matter  of  the  science.  Mr.  Mill's  lan- 
guage in  one  place  appears  to  negative  this  claim,  though 
very  gently ;  and  the  question  has  been  re-opened,  in  De 
Quincey's  interest,  by  Mr.  Shadworth  Hodgson  in  an  es- 
say entitled  De  Quincey  as  Political  Economist.  Enough 
here  on  that  matter. 

If  De  Quincey  surpasses  himself  anywhere  in  his  didac- 
tic papers,  it  is  in  those  that  concern  Literary  Theory  and 
Criticism.  Nq  English  writer  has  left  a  finer  body  of  dis- 
quisition on  the  science  and  principles  of  Literature  than 
will  be  found  in  De  Quincey's  general  papers  entitled  Bhet- 
oric,  Style,  and  Language,  and  his  Letters  to  a  Young  Man, 
together  with  his  more  particular  articles  entitled  Theory 
of  Greek  Tragedy,  The  Antigone  of  Sophocles,  Milton, 
Milton  versus  Southey  and  Landor,  Alexander  Pope,  Lord 
Carlisle  on  Pope,  Schlosser^s  Literary  History  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Century,  and  On  Wordsworth's  Poetry.  There,  or 
elsewhere  in  De  Quincey,  will  be  found  the  last  word,  so 
far  as  there  can  be  a  last  word,  on  some  of  the  most  im- 
portant questions  of  style  or  literary  art,  and  a  treatment 
of  literary  questions  throwing  back  into  mere  obsolete  in- 
eptitude the  literary  theories  of  such  masters  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  as  Addison  and  Johnson,  and  of  such  of 
their  successors  as  the  acute  Jeffrey  and  the  robust  but 
coarse  -  grained  Whately.  Goethe,  the '  greatest  literary 
critic  that  ever  lived,  was  more  comprehensive  and  uni- 
versally tolerant ;  but  De  Quincey  was  facile  princeps,  to 
the  extent  of  his  touch,  among  the  English  critics  of  his 
generation.     He  acknowledged  that  he  had  received  some 


XII.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  181 

of  his  leading  ideas  in  literary  art  from  Wordsworth  origi- 
nally ;  but  whatever  he  derived  from  Wordsworth  was  ma- 
tured by  so  much  independent  reflection,  and  so  modified 
by  the  peculiarities  of  his  own  temperament,  that  the  re- 
sult was  a  system  of  precepts  differing  from  Wordsworth's 
in  not  a  few  points. 

One  of  the  best  known  of  De  Quincey's  critical  maxims 
is  his  distinction,  after  Wordsworth,  between  the  Litera- 
ture of  Knowledge,  which  he  would  call  Literature  only  by 
courtesy,  and  the  Literature  of  Power,  which  alone  he  re- 
garded as  Literature  proper.  My  belief  is,  that  the  dis- 
tinction has  been  overworked  in  the  form  in  which  De 
Quincey  put  it  forth,  and  that  it  would  require  a  great  deal 
of  re-explication  and  modification  to  bring  it  into  defensi- 
ble and  permanent  shape.  As  it  would  be  unpardonable, 
however,  to  omit  this  De  Quincey  ism  in  a  sketch  of  De 
Quincey's  opinions,  here  is  one  of  the  passages  in  which 
he  expounds  it : 

•*  Thk  Literature  of  Knowledge  and  the  LiTERATuiui  op  Power. 
"  In  that  great  social  organ  which,  collectively,  we  call  Literature, 
there  may  be  distinguished  two  separate  offices  that  may  blend  and 
often  do  so,  but  capable,  severally,  of  a  severe  insulation,  and  natu- 
rally fitted  for  reciprocal  repulsion.  There  is,  first,  the  literature  of 
knowledge,  and,  secondly,  the  literature  of  power.  The  function  of  the 
first  is  to  teach  ;  the  function  of  the  second  is  to  move :  the  first  is  a 
rudder,  the  second  an  oar  or  a  sail.  The  first  speaks  to  the  mere  dis- 
cursive understanding ;  the  second  speaks  ultimately,  it  may  happen, 
to  the  higher  understanding  or  reason,  but  always  through  affections 
of  pleasure  and  sympathy.  Remotely,  it  may  travel  towards  an  ob- 
ject seated  in  what  Lord  Bacon  calls  dry  light ;  but,  proximately,  it 
does  and  must  operate,  else  it  ceases  to  be  a  literature  of  power,  in 
and  through  that  humid  light  which  clothes  itself  in  the  mists  and 
glittering  iris  of  human  passions,  desires,  and  genial  emotions.  Men 
have  so  little  reflected  on  the  higher  functions  of  literature  as  to  find 
it  a  paradox  if  one  should  describe  it  as  a  mean  or  subordinate  pur- 


182  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

pose  of  books  to  give  information.  But  this  is  a  paradox  only  in  the 
sense  which  makes  it  honourable  to  be  paradoxical.  Whenever  we 
talk  in  ordinary  language  of  seeking  information  or  gaining  knowl- 
edge, we  understand  the  words  as  connected  with  something  of  abso. 
lute  novelty.  But  it  is  the  grandeur  of  all  truth  which  can  occupy  a 
very  high  place  in  human  interests  that  it  is  never  absolutely  novel 
to  the  meanest  of  minds :  it  exists  eternally  by  way  of  germ  or  latent 
principle  in  the  lowest  as  in  the  highest,  needing  to  be  developed,  but 
never  to  be  planted.  To  be  capable  of  transplantation  is  the  imme- 
diate criterion  of  a  truth  that  ranges  on  a  lower  scale.  Besides 
which,  there  is  a  rarer  thing  than  truth — namely,  jaower,  or  deep  sym- 
pathy with  truth.  .  .  .  Were  it  not  that  human  sensibilities  are  venti- 
lated and  continually  called  out  into  exercise  by  the  great  phenomena 
of  infancy,  or  of  real  life  as  it  moves  through  chance  and  change,  or 
of  literature  as  it  re-combines  these  elements  in  the  mimicries  of 
poetry,  romance,  &c.,  it  is  certain  that,  like  any  animal  power  or 
muscular  energy  falling  into  disuse,  all  such  sensibilities  would  grad- 
ually drop  and  dwindle.  It  is  in  relation  to  these  great  moral  capac- 
ities of  man  that  the  literature  of  power,  as  contradistinguished  from 
that  of  knowledge,  lives  and  has  its  field  of  action.  It  is  concerned 
with  what  is  highest  in  man;  for  the  Scriptures  themselves  never 
condescended  to  deal,  by  suggestion  or  co  -  operation,  with  the  mere 
discursive  understanding :  when  speaking  of  man  in  his  intellectual 
capacity,  the  Scriptures  speak  not  of  the  understanding,  but  of  '  the 
understanding  heart ' — making  the  heart,  i.  e.,  the  great  intuitive  (or 
non-discursive)  organ,  to  be  the  interchangeable  formula  for  man  in 
his  highest  state  of  capacity  for  the  infinite.  Tragedy,  romance, 
fairy  tale,  or  epopee,  all  alike  restore  to  man's  mind  the  ideals  of 
justice,  of  hope,  of  truth,  of  mercy,  of  retribution,  which  else  (left  to 
the  support  of  daily  life  in  its  realities)  would  languish  for  want  of 
sufficient  illustration.  .  .  .  Hence  the  pre-eminency  over  all  authors 
that  merely  tea^h  of  the  meanest  that  moves,  or  that  teaches,  if  at  all, 
indirectly  by  moving.  The  very  highest  work  that  has  ever  existed 
in  the  hterature  of  knowledge  is  but  a  provisional  work,  a  book  upon 
trial  and  sufferance,  and  quamdiu  bene  se  gesserit.  Let  its  teaching 
be  even  par' 'ally  revised,  let  it  be  but  expanded,  nay,  let  its  teaching 
be  but  placed  in  a  better  order,  and  instantly  it  is  superseded. 
Whereas  the  feeblest  works  in  the  literature  of  power,  surviving  at 
all,  survive  as  finished  and  unalterable  amongst  men.    For  instance, 


xn.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  183 

the  Princijna  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  a  book  militant  on  earth  from 
the  first.  In  all  stages  of  its  progress  it  would  have  to  fight  for  its 
existence — first,  as  regards  absolute  truth ;  secondly,  when  that  com- 
bat was  over,  as  regards  its  form  or  mode  of  presenting  the  truth. 
And,  as  soon  as  a  La  Place,  or  anybody  else,  builds  higher  upon  the 
foundations  laid  by  this  book,  effectually  he  throws  it  out  of  the  sun- 
shine into  decay  and  darkness ;  by  weapons  even  from  this  book  he 
superannuates  and  destroys  this  book,  so  that  soon  the  name  of  New- 
ton remains  as  a  mere  nominis  umbra,  but  his  book,  as  a  living  power, 
has  transmigrated  into  other  forms.  Now,  on  the  contrary,  the  Uiad, 
the  Prometheus  of  ^schylus,  the  Othello  or  Kinff  Lear,  the  Hamlet  or 
Macbeth,  or  the  Paradise  Lost,  are  not  militant,  but  triumphant  for 
ever,  as  long  as  the  languages  exist  in  which  they  speak  or  can  be 
taught  to  speak.  They  never  can  transmigrate  into  new  incarnations. 
To  reproduce  them  in  new  forms  or  variations,  even  if  in  some  things 
they  should  be  improved,  would  be  to  plagiarize.  A  good  steam- 
engine  is  properly  superseded  by  a  better.  But  one  lovely  pastoral 
valley  is  not  superseded  by  another,  nor  a  statue  of  Praxiteles  by  a 
statue  of  Michael  Angelo."— TTorfe,  Vin.  5-9. 

in.  Imaginative  Writings  and  Prose  Poetet. 

In  this  class  may  be  reckoned  the  following : 

I.  Humorous  Extravaganzas: — The  paraxon  in  this  kind  is,  of 
course,  Murder  Considered  as  One  of  the  Pine  Arts.  There  are,  how- 
ever, occasional  passages  of  frolicsome  invention  through  the  other 
papers ;  and  the  entire  paper  Sortilege  and  Astrology  may  be  taken 
as  &jeu  d' esprit  of  the  same  sort. 

n.  Incidents  op  Real  Life  and  Passages  of  History  Treated 
Imaginatively  : — In  addition  to  the  poetic  versions  of  incidents  from 
real  life  that  are  interwrought  with  the  expressly  autobiographic 
writings,  there  ought  to  be  mentioned  specially  the  paper  entitled 
Early  Memorials  of  Grasmere.  It  is  the  story  of  the  loss  of  two 
peasants,  a  husband  and  his  wife,  among  the  hills,  during  a  snow- 
storm in  the  Lake  District,  in  the  year  ISOY.  In  the  same  group, 
on  grounds  of  literary  principle,  may  be  reckoned  the  story  called  7%« 
Spanish  Military  Nun  and  the  paper  entitled  Joan  of  Arc.  As  has 
been  already  hinted,  The  RevoU  of  the  Tartars  might  rank  in  the  same 
high  company. 

in.  Novelettes  and  Romances  : — Chief  among  these  is  De  Quin- 


184  DE  QTJINCET.  [chap. 

cey's  one-volume  novel  or  romance,  Klosterheim,  published  in  1832, 
and  unfortunately  not  included  in  the  edition  of  his  collected  works, 
nor  accessible  at  present  in  any  form,  to  any  of  her  Majesty's  sub- 
jects, except  by  importation  of  an  American  reprint.  In  connexion 
with  this  independent  attempt  in  prose  fiction,  we  may  remember  the 
short  story  or  novelette  called  The  Avenger  (reprinted  in  Vol.  XVL 
from  Blackwood's  Magazine  of  1838)  and  Walladmor,  the  pseudo- 
Waverley  Novel  of  1824,  which  De  Quincey  translated  from  the  Ger- 
man.  There  are,  besides,  some  novelettes  from  the  German,  reprint- 
ed in  the  collective  edition. 

IV.  Prose  Phantasiks  and  Lyrics  : — Although  De  Quincey  ranked 
the  whole  of  his  Confessions  as  properly  an  example  of  that  "mode 
of  impassioned  prose"  in  which  he  thought  there  had  been  few  or 
no  precedents  in  English,  it  is  enough  here  to  remember  those  parts 
of  the  Confessions  which  may  be  distinguished  as  "  dream  phanta- 
sies." To  be  added,  under  our  present  heading  (besides  passages  in 
the  Autobiographic  Sketches),  are  ITie  Davghier  of  Ldninxm,  the  ex- 
traordinary paper  in  three  parts  called  The  English  Mail  Coach,  and 
the  Uttle  cluster  of  fragments  called  Suspiria  de  Profundis  {i.  e., 
"  Sighs  from  the  Depths  "),  being  a  Sequd  to  the  Confessions  of  an 
English  Opium^ater.  In  fact,  however,  only  three  of  the  six  frag- 
ments there  gathered  under  the  common  name  of  "Suspiria"  are 
either  "lyrics"  or  "  phantasies,"  the  rest  being  critical  or  psycholog- 
ical. The  three  entitled  to  a  place  here  are  those  entitled  Levana 
and  Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow,  Savannah-la-Mar,  and  Memorial  Suspiria. 

The  celebrity  of  the  essay  On  Murder  Considered  as 
One  of  the  Fine  Arts  is  not  surprising.  The  ghastly 
originality  of  the  conception,  the  humorous  irony  with 
which  it  is  sustained  by  stroke  after  stroke,  and  the  mad 
frenzy  of  the  closing  scene,  where  the  assembled  club  of 
amateurs  in  murder,  with  Toad-in-the-hole  leading  them, 
drink  their  toasts  and  sing  their  chorus  in  honour  of  cer- 
tain superlative  specimens  of  their  favourite  art,  leave  an 
impression  altogether  exceptional,  as  of  pleasure  mixed 
illegitimately  with  the  forbidden  and  horrible.  For  a 
lighter  and  more  genial  specimen  of  De  Quincey  in  his 


xn.1  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  185 

whimsical  vein,  Sortilege  and  Astrology  may  be  cordially 
recommended.  To  pass  from  such  papers  to  Early  Me- 
morials of  Grasmere,  The  Spanish  Military  Nun,  and 
Joan  of  Arc,  gives  one  a  fresh  idea  of  the  versatility  of 
his  powers.  The  first,  describing  winter  among  the  Eng- 
lish Lakes,  and  telling  the  tragic  story  of  George  and 
Sarah  Green,  and  of  the  bravery  of  their  little  girl  left  in 
charge  of  the  cottage  to  which  they  were  never  to  return 
alive,  has  all  the  mournful  beauty  of  a  commemorative 
prose-poem.  The  second,  which  is  a  narrative,  from  his- 
torical materials,  of  the  adventures  of  a  daring  Spanish 
girl,  in  man's  disguise,  first  in  Spain  and  then  in  the  Span- 
ish parts  of  the  new  world,  in  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  is  in  De  Quincey's  most  characteristic 
style  of  mingled  humour  and  earnestness,  and  has  all  the 
fascination  of  one  of  the  best  of  the  Spanish  picaresque 
romances.  The  paper  on  Joan  of  Arc,  though  brief,  is 
nobly  perfect.  "  What  is  to  be  thought  of  her  ?  What 
is  to  be  thought  of  the  poor  shepherd  girl  from  the  hills 
and  forests  of  Lorraine,  that,  like  the  Hebrew  shepherd 
boy  from  the  hills  and  forests  of  Judea,  rose  suddenly 
out  of  the  quiet,  out  of  the  safety,  out  of  the  religious  in- 
spiration, rooted  in  deep  pastoral  solitudes,  to  a  station 
in  the  van  of  armies,  and  to  the  more  perilous  station 
at  the  right  hand  of  kings?"  Opening  in  this  strain  of 
poetic  solemnity,  the  paper  maintains  the  same  high  tone 
throughout ;  and,  if  it  does  not  leave  the  question  an- 
swered by  enshrining  the  image  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans 
in  a  suflBcient  vision  of  glory,  there  is  no  such  answer  in 
the  English  language. 

De  Quincey  included  in  his  collected  works  two  short 
tales   of  clever  humour,  called  The  Incognito,  or  Count 
Fitzkum,  and  The  King  of  Hayti,  and  a  third,  called  The 
N    9 


186  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

Dice,  a  short  story  of  devilry  and  blact  art,  describing 
the  first  as  "  translated  from  the  German  of  Dr.  Schultze," 
and  the  other  two  merely  as  "  from  the  German."  Pass- 
ing these  and  a  fourth  tale,  called  The  Fatal  Marksman, 
which  is  somewhat  in  the  style  of  the  third,  and  seems 
also  to  be  from  the  German  (though  that  is  not  stated), 
we  have,  as  the  single  original  novelette  of  De  Quincey 
among  the  collected  works,  the  strange  piece  called  The 
Avenger.  It  is  a  story,  wholly  fantastic  and  sensational, 
but  quite  in  De  Quincey's  vein,  of  a  series  of  appalling 
and  mysterious  murders  supposed  to  happen  in  a  German 
town  in  the  year  1816,  and  of  the  astounding  discovery 
at  last  that  they  have  all  been  the  work  of  a  certain  mag- 
nificent youth,  Maximilian  Wyndham,  of  mixed  English 
and  Jewish  descent,  and  of  immense  wealth,  who  had 
come  to  reside  in  the  town,  in  the  house  of  one  of  the 
University  professors,  with  high  Russian  credentials  and 
universal  acceptance  among  the  citizens.  He  had  come 
thither  nominally  to  complete  his  studies,  but  really  in 
pursuit  of  a  secret  scheme  of  vengeance  upon  those  of  the 
inhabitants  who  had  been  concerned  in  certain  deadly  in- 
juries and  dishonours  done  to  his  family,  and  especially 
to  his  Jewish  mother.  The  story  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  much  read ;  and  admirers  of  De  Quincey  may  judge 
from  this  description  of  it  whether  it  is  worth  looking  up. 
It  may  be  even  more  necessary  to  give  some  account  of 
Klosterheim,  or  the  Masque. 

As  originally  published  by  Blackwood  in  1832,  it  was 
a  small  prettily-printed  volume  of  305  pages,  without  De 
Quincey's  name  after  the  title,  but  only  the  words  "  By 
the  English  Opium-eater."  It  would  make  about  half  a 
volume  in  the  collective  edition  of  the  works,  were  it  in- 
cluded there. 


HI.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  187 

The  scene  of  the  story  is  an  imaginary  German  city, 
Klosterheim,  with  its  forest-neighbourhood;  and  the  time 
is  the  winter  of  1633,  with  part  of  the  year  1634,  or  just 
at  that  point  of  the  great  Thirty  Years'  War  when,  after 
the  death  of  Gustavus  Adolphus,  his  Swedish  generals  are 
maintaining  the  war  against  the  Imperialists,  and  all  Ger- 
many is  in  confusion  and  misery  with  the  marchings  and 
counter-marchings,  the  ravagings  and  counter-ravagings, 
of  the  opposed  armies.  The  Klosterheimers,  as  good 
Catholics,  are  mainly  in  sympathy  with  the  Imperialists, 
but  are  in  the  peculiar  predicament  of  being  subject  to  a 
gloomy  and  tyrannical  Landgrave,  who,  though  a  bigoted 
Roman  Catholic,  has  reasons  of  his  own  for  cultivating 
the  Swedish  alliance,  and  is  in  fact  in  correspondence  with 
the  Swedes.  A  leading  spirit  among  them,  and  especially 
among  the  University  students,  is  a  certain  splendid 
soldier-youth,  Maximilian,  a  stranger  from  a  distance.  So, 
when  the  Klosterheimers  are  in  excitement  over  the  ap- 
proach to  their  city,  through  the  forest,  of  a  travelling 
mass  of  pilgrims,  under  Imperialist  convoy,  all  the  way 
from  Vienna,  and  over  the  chances  that  the  poor  pilgrims 
may  be  attacked  and  cut  to  pieces  by  a  certain  brutal  Hol- 
kerstein,  the  head  of  a  host  of  marauders  who  prowl 
through  the  forest,  who  but  this  Maximilian  is  the  man  to 
execute  the  general  desire  of  Klosterheim  by  evading  the 
orders  of  the  cruel  Landgrave  and  carrying  armed  aid  to 
the  pilgrims  ?  Well  that  he  has  done  so ;  for  in  the  midst 
of  the  pilgrim-cavalcade,  and  the  chief  personage  in  it,  is 
his  own  lady-love,  the  noble  Paulina,  a  relative  of  the  Em- 
peror, and  entrusted  by  him  with  despatches.  The  lovers 
meet ;  and,  save  for  a  night-alarm,  in  the  course  of  which 
the  portmanteau  of  secret  despatches  is  abstracted  by  rob- 
bers from  Lady  Paulina's  carriage,  there  is  no  accident  till 
38 


188  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

the  pilgrims  are  close  to  Klosterheim,  There,  in  the 
night-time,  Holkerstein  and  his  host  of  marauders  do 
fall  upon  them.  There  is  a  dreadful  night-battle;  and, 
though  the  marauding  host  is  beaten  ofiE,  chiefly  by  the 
heroic  valour  of  Maximilian,  it  is  but  a  wreck  of  the 
pilgrim-army  that  enters  Klosterheim  on  the  morrow—* 
and  then,  alas!  without  Maximilian  among  them.  He 
has  been  carried  away  by  the  marauders,  a  wounded  pris- 
oner. The  residue  of  the  poor  pilgrims  are  dispersed 
through  the  city  somehow  for  hospitality,  and  the  dole- 
ful Lady  Paulina  takes  up  her  abode  in  the  great  abbey, 
close  to  the  Landgrave's  palace.  Then,  for  a  while,  we 
are  among  the  Klosterheimers,  and  called  upon  to  pity 
them.  For  the  gloomy  Landgrave,  always  a  tyrant,  now 
revels  in  acts  of  tyranny  and  cruelty  utterly  indiscrimi- 
nate and  capricious,  maddened  by  the  goad  of  some  new 
motive,  which  is  not  explained,  but  which  we  connect 
with  intelligence  he  has  obtained  from  the  abstracted 
imperial  despatches.  There  are  arrests  of  students  and 
citizens ;  all  are  in  consternation  ;  no  one  knows  what 
will  happen  next.  Suddenly,  however,  a  counter-agency 
is  at  work  in  Klosterheim,  baffling  and  bewildering  the 
Landgrave  and  his  wily  Italian  minister  Adorni.  This  is 
a  certain  mysterious  being,  whether  human  or  supernatu- 
ral no  one  can  tell,  who  calls  himself  "  The  Masque,"  and 
seems  omnipresent  and  resistless.  He  appears  when  and 
where  he  likes,  passes  through  bolts  and  bars,  leaves 
messages  to  the  Landgrave  nailed  up  in  public  places,  and 
defies  his  police.  Houses  are  entered ;  citizens  disappear, 
sometimes  with  signs  of  scuffle  and  bloodshed  left  in 
their  rooms ;  and,  as  these  victims  of  "  The  Masque  "  are 
not  exclusively  from  the  ranks  of  the  Landgrave's  par- 
tisans, it  becomes  doubtful  whether  the  mysterious  being 


m.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  189 

has  any  political  purpose,  or  is  a  mere  demon  of  general 
malignity.  But,  evidently,  the  Landgrave  is  his  main 
mark;  and  it  is  in  the  palace  of  the  Landgrave  that  he 
makes  his  presence  and  his  power  most  daringly  felt. 
How,  for  example,  he  appeared  there  at  a  great  masked 
ball,  to  which  exactly  twelve  hundred  persons  had  been 
invited  by  numbered  tickets;  how,  when  the  twelve 
hundred  had  been,  by  arrangement,  counted  off  in  the 
hall,  and  aggregated  apart,  he  was  seen  in  majestic  and 
solitary  composure,  leaning  against  a  marble  column,  and 
it  seemed  as  if  the  Landgrave  and  Adorni  had  but  to  give 
the  word  to  their  myrmidons  to  clutch  him ;  but  how 
there  was  nothing  of  that  expected  catastrophe,  but  only  a 
scornful  disappearance  of  the  awful  figure,  as  if  in  cloud  or 
smoke,  after  some  words  from  his  hollow  voice  which  left 
the  Landgrave  trembling:  for  all  this,  and  much  more, 
there  must  be  application  inside  the  little  volume  itself. 
In  reading  it,  you  are  as  if  in  the  heart  of  one  of  Mrs.  Rad- 
cliffe's  novels,  with  the  usual  paraphernalia  of  cloaks,  nod- 
ding plumes,  ghostly  sounds,  labyrinthine  corridors  and 
secret  passages,  pictures  of  ancestors  on  the  walls,  and  the 
rest  of  it ;  and  you  long  to  be  out  of  such  a  curiosity-shop 
of  jumbled  incredibilities,  and  to  know  the  denouement. 
That  does  not  come  till  after  new  episodes  of  danger  to 
Lady  Paulina,  new  coils  of  marvel  round  the  mysterious 
"  Masque,"  and  a  second  great  assembly  in  the  palace,  with 
a  vast  mechanism  of  new  preparations  by  the  infuriated 
Landgrave  for  the  discomfiture  of  his  adversary.  Let  these 
be  supposed ;  and  let  it  be  supposed  that  the  6th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1634,  has  passed,  and  that  the  Swedes  have  been 
routed  and  the  Imperialists  triumphant  in  the  great  battle 
of  Nordlingen.  What  need,  then,  for  further  mystery  ? 
The  hour  has  come  for  that  revolution  in  Klosterheim 


190  ^E  QFINCEY.  .       [chat. 

which  the  Emperor  himself  had  devised  from  Vienna,  and 
manipulated  in  the  secret  despatches  he  had  sent  by  the 
Lady  Paulina.  All  is  revealed  in  a  crash.  Maximilian  is 
the  true  Landgrave,  the  hitherto  undivulged  son  of  the  last 
good  Landgrave ;  and  the  present  usurper  had  come  to  his 
power  by  the  murder  of  Maximilian's  father,  and  maintain- 
ed it  by  other  crimes.  In  the  crash  of  this  revelation  the 
gloomy  usurper  sinks,  the  last  blow  to  the  wretched  man 
being  the  death  of  his  daughter  by  a  mistake  of  his  own 
murderous  order  for  the  execution  of  the  Lady  Paulina. 
Maximilian  marries  Paulina ;  there  are  other  more  minute 
solutions  and  surprises;  and  the  Klosterheimers,  under 
their  new  Landgrave,  are  again  a  happy  people.  But  who 
was  the  mysterious  "  Masque  ?"  Who  but  Maximilian  him- 
self ?  Trap-doors  and  subterranean  passages,  his  own  dex- 
terity, and  collusion  with  the  requisite  number  of  citizens 
and  students,  and  with  an  old  seneschal  of  the  tyrant,  had 
done  the  whole  business;  and  the  only  blood  really  shed 
in  the  course  of  it  had  been  that  of  the  poor  seneschal, 
betrayed  by  accident,  and  stabbed  by  his  master. 

Such  is  De  Quincey's  one-volume  romance,  a  poor  per- 
formance, doubtless  for  the  sake  of  a  little  money,  about 
the  time  when  he  settled  in  Edinburgh.  Was  he  ashamed 
of  it  afterwards,  that  he  did  not  reprint  it  ?  There  was  no 
necessity  for  that;  for,  though  the  story  does  not  show 
the  craft  of  a  Sir  Walter  Scott,  it  is  by  no  means  bad  of 
its  preposterous  kind.  The  style,  at  all  events,  is  remark- 
ably careful,  with  a  marble  beauty  of  sentence  that  makes 
one  linger  as  one  reads. 

There  remains  to  be  noticed,  in  the  last  place,  that  very 
special  portion  of  De  Quincey's  writings  of  the  imagina- 
tive order  for  which  he  claimed  distinction  above  the  rest, 
as  illustrating  "  a  mode  of  impassioned  prose  "  but  slightly 


xn.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  191 

represented  before  in  English  Literature.  It  may  be  ques- 
tioned, however,  whether  the  pieces  for  which  he  claimed 
this  distinction  are  described  most  exactly  by  the  phrase 
"impassioned  prose."  Their  peculiarity  is  not  so  much 
that  they  are  impassioned  in  any  ordinary  sense  as  that 
they  are  imaginative  or  poetical  after  a  very  definite  and 
rather  rare  sort.  It  was  one  of  the  distinctions  of  De 
Quincey's  intellect  that  it  could  pass  from  that  ordinary  or 
discursive  exercise  of  itself  which  consists  in  expounding, 
reasoning,  or  investigating,  to  that  poetic  exercise  of  itself 
which  consists  in  the  formation  of  visions  or  phantasies ; 
and  it  did,  in  fact,  so  pass  on  those  occasions  more  partic- 
ularly when  it  was  moved  by  pathos  or  by  the  feeling  of 
the  mysterious  and  awful.  What  is  most  observable,  there- 
fore, in  the  pieces  under  notice  is,  that  they  exhibit  the 
operation  of  those  two  constitutional  kinds  of  emotion 
upon  De  Quincey's  intellectual  activity,  transmuting  it 
from  the  common  or  discursive  mode  to  that  called  poetic 
imagination.  Inasmuch  as  it  is  the  implicated  feeling  or 
sentiment  that  moves  the  intellectual  process,  and  inasmuch 
as  there  are  marks  of  this  in  the  rhythmical  or  lyrical  char- 
acter of  the  result,  there  is  no  great  harm  in  calling  that 
result  impassioned  prose,  especially  if  we  keep  to  the  lim- 
itation stipulated  by  De  Quincey's  own  phrase,  "a  mode  of 
impassioned  prose ;"  but  it  is  better,  all  in  all,  to  define  the 
writings  under  consideration  as  examples  of  a  peculiar 
"  mode  of  imaginative  prose,"  and,  if  further  definition  is 
wanted  of  this  peculiar  mode  of  prose  poetry,  to  call  it 
Prose  Phantasy  and  Lyric,  or  Lyrical  Prose  Phantasy. 
De  Quincey  was  consciously  and  deliberately  an  artist  in 
this  form  of  prose  poetry,  and  has  left  specimens  of  it  that 
have  very  few  parallels  in  English.  One  ought  to  remem- 
ber, however,  how  much  he  naust  have  been  influenced  by 


192  DE  QUINCET.  [chap. 

the  previous  example  of  Jean  Paul  Richter.  Of  his  admi- 
ration of  the  famous  German  before  he  had  himself  begun 
his  career  of  literature  there  is  proof  in  his  article  on  Rich- 
ter published  in  the  London  Magazine  in  December,  1821, 
just  after  the  appearance  of  his  Confessions  in  their  first 
form  in  the  same  magazine ;  and  one  observes  that  among 
the  translated  *'  analects  "  from  Richter  which  accompanied 
or  followed  that  article,  and  were  intended  to  introduce 
Richter  to  the  English  public,  were  The  Happy  Life  of  a 
Parish  Priest  in  Sweden  and  the  Dream  upon  the  Universe, 
both  of  them  specimens  of  Richter's  peculiar  art  of  prose 
phantasy.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Richter's  example 
in  such  pieces  influenced  De  Quincey  permanently.  But, 
though  he  may  have  learnt  something  from  Richter,  he  was 
an  original  master  in  the  same  art. 

One  might  go  back  here  on  his  Joan  of  Are,  and  some 
of  the  other  writings  of  which  account  has  been  already  tak- 
en, and  claim  for  them,  or  for  parts  of  them,  fresh  recogni' 
tion  in  our  present  connexion.  But  let  us  confine  ourselves 
to  the  writings  to  which  De  Quincey  seems  to  have  pointed 
more  especially,  and  which  have  been  already  enumerated. 

To  the  famous  passages  of  "dream-phantasy"  in  the 
Opium  Confessions  we  need  not  re-advert  farther  than  to 
say  that,  extraordinary  as  they  are  as  a  whole,  one  may 
fairly  object  to  parts  of  them,  as  to  some  of  the  similar 
dream-phantasies  in  Richter,  that  they  fail  by  too  much 
obtrusion  of  artistic  self-consciousness  in  their  construction, 
and  sometimes  also  by  a  swooning  of  the  power  of  clear 
and  consecutive  vision  in  a  mere  piling  and  excess  of 
imagery  and  sound.  The  stroke  on  the  mind  at  the  time 
is  not  always  equal  to  the  look  of  the  apparatus  for  inflict- 
ing it;  and  the  memory  does  not  retain  a  suflScient  scar. 
No  such  objection  can  be  urged  against  The  Daughter  of 


HI.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  198 

Lebanon,  a  fine  visionary  lyric  of  seven  pages,  figuring  an 
early  and  miraculous  conversion  to  Christianity  in  the  per- 
son of  an  ideal  girl  of  Damascus.  Nor  would  any  of  De 
Quincey's  readers  give  up  the  first  two  sections  of  The 
English  Mail  Coach,  sub-titled  "The  Glory  of  Motion" 
and  "The  Vision  of  Sudden  Death."  There  is  nothing 
in  Jean  Paul  quite  like  these. 

In  the  first  we  are  back  in  the  old  days  between  Trafal- 
gar and  Waterloo.  Drawn  up  at  the  General  Post-ofiice,  in 
Lombard  Street,  and  waiting  for  the  hour  to  start,  we  see 
His  Majesty's  mails — carriages,  harness,  horses,  lamps,  the 
dresses  of  driver  and  guard,  all  in  the  perfection  of  Eng- 
lish equipment,  and,  if  there  has  been  news  that  day  of  a 
great  victory,  then  the  laurels,  the  oak-leaves,  the  flowers, 
the  ribbons,  in  addition.  Seating  ourselves  beside  the 
driver  on  one  of  the  mails,  we  begin  our  journey  of  three 
hundred  miles  along  one  of  the  great  roads,  north  or  west, 
leaving  Lombard  Street  at  a  quarter  past  eight  in  the  even- 
ing. How,  once  out  into  the  country,  we  shoot  along, 
horses  at  gallop,  the  breeze  in  our  faces,  hedges  and  trees 
and  fields  and  homesteads  rushing  past  us  in  the  darkness 
which  we  and  our  lamps  are  cleaving  like  a  fiery  arrow ! 
How,  at  every  stopping -station,  there  are  the  lights  and 
bustle  at  the  inn-door,  and  the  laurels  and  other  bedizen- 
ments  we  carry  are  seen  ere  we  have  well  stopped,  and  we 
shout  "  Badajoz  "  or  "  Salamanca  "  in  explanation,  or  what- 
ever else  may  have  been  the  last  victory,  and  the  hostlers 
and  other  inn-folk  take  up  the  huzza,  and  it  is  one  round 
of  congratulation  and  hand-shaking  while  we  stay !  But, 
punctually  to  the  minute,  having  changed  horses,  and  left 
the  news  palpitating  in  that  neighbourhood,  we  are  on 
again,  horses  at  gallop,  coach-lamps  burning,  and  we  beside 
the  driver  on  the  front  seat,  conscious  that  we  are  carrying 
9* 


194  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

the  same  news  with  us  to  neighbourhoods  still  ahead !  On, 
on,  stage  after  stage,  in  the  same  fashion,  still  cleaving  the 
darkness,  the  horse-hoofs  always  audible  and  the  coach- 
lamps  always  burning,  till  the  darkness  yields  to  a  silver 
glimmer  and  the  glimmer  to  the  glare  of  day!  Such  is 
the  series  of  sensations  De  Quincey  has  contrived  to  give 
us  in  his  prose-poem  called  "  The  Glory  of  Motion."  In 
the  sequel,  entitled  "  The  Vision  of  Sudden  Death,"  we 
are  still  on  the  same  night  journey  by  coach,  or  rather  on 
one  later  night  journey  on  the  Northern  road  between  sixty 
and  seventy  years  ago,  with  the  difference  that  the  glory 
of  motion  is  now  turned  into  horror.  Prosaically  de- 
scribed, the  paper  is  a  recollection  of  a  fatal  accident  by 
collision  of  the  mail,  in  a  very  dark  part  of  the  road,  with 
a  solitary  vehicle  containing  two  persons,  one  of  them  a 
woman ;  but  it  is  for  the  paper  itself  to  show  what  the  in- 
cident becomes  in  De  Quincey's  hands.  It  passes  into  a 
third  paper,  still  under  the  same  general  title  of  The  Eng- 
lish Mail  Coach ;  which  third  paper,  indeed,  bears  the  ex- 
traordinary sub-title  of  "  Dream-Fugue,  founded  on  the  pre- 
ceding theme  of  Sudden  Death."  I  cannot  say  that  this 
"  dream-fugue,"  which  is  offered  as  a  lyrical  finale  to  the 
little  series,  in  visionary  coherence  with  the  preceding 
pieces,  accomplishes  its  purpose  very  successfully.  It  is 
liable  to  the  objection  which  may  be  urged,  as  we  have 
said,  against  other  specimens  of  De  Quincey  in  the  pecul- 
iar art  of  dream-phantasy.  The  artifice  is  too  apparent, 
and  the  meaning  is  all  but  lost  in  a  mere  vague  of  music. 

Of  the  three  scraps  of  the  Suspiria  that  are  entitled  to 
rank  among  the  lyrical  prose  phantasies,  viz.,  Levana  and 
Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow,  Savannah-la-Mar,  and  Memorial 
Suspiria,  only  the  first  is  of  much  importance.  But  that 
scrap,  written  in  De  Quincey's  later  life,  is  of  as  high  ira- 


XII.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  196 

portance  as  anything  he  ever  wrote.  It  is,  perhaps,  the 
highest  and  finest  thing,  and  also  the  most  constitotionally 
significant,  in  all  De  Quincey.  Fortunately,  the  essential 
core  of  it  can  be  quoted  entire.  All  that  it  is  necessary 
to  premise  is,  that  "  Levana "  was  the  Roman  Goddess  of 
Education,  the  divinity  who  was  supposed  to  "  lift  up " 
every  newly-born  human  being  from  the  earth  in  token 
that  it  should  live,  and  to  rule  the  influences  to  which  it 
should  be  subject  thenceforth  till  its  character  sbauld  be 
fully  formed : 

•'The  Three  Ladies  of  Sorrow. 

"  I  know  them  thoroughly,  and  have  walked  in  all  their  kingdoms. 
Three  sisters  they  are,  of  one  mysterious  household ;  and  their  paths 
are  wide  apart ;  but  of  their  dominion  there  is  no  end.  Them  I  saw 
often  conversing  with  Levana,  and  sometimes  about  myself.  Do  they 
talk,  then  ?  Oh,  no !  Mighty  phantoms  like  these  disdain  the  infirmi- 
ties of  language.  They  may  utter  voices  through  the  organs  of  man 
when  they  dwell  in  human  hearts,  but  amongst  themselves  there  is 
no  voice  nor  sound ;  eternal  silence  reigns  in  their  kingdoms.  They 
spoke  not,  as  they  talked  with  Levana ;  they  whispered  not ;  they 
sang  not ;  though  oftentimes  methought  they  might  have  sung :  for 
I  upon  earth  had  heard  their  mysteries  oftentimes  deciphered  by 
harp  and  timbrel,  by  dulcimer  and  organ.  Like  God,  whose  servants 
they  are,  they  utter  their  pleasure,  not  by  sounds  that  perish,  or  by 
words  that  go  astray,  but  by  signs  in  heaven,  by  changes  on  earth, 
by  pulses  in  secret  rivers,  heraldries  painted  in  darkness,  and  hiero- 
glyphics written  on  the  tablets  of  the  brain.  They  wheeled  in  mazes ; 
/spelled  the  steps.  They  telegraphed  from  afar ;  I  read  the  signals. 
TTiey  conspired  together ;  and  on  the  mirrors  of  darkness  my  eye 
traced  the  plots.     Theirs  were  the  symbols ;  m,ine  are  the  words. 

"What  is  it  the  sisters  are?  What  is  it  that  they  do?  Let  me 
describe  their  form  and  their  presence :  if  form  it  were  that  still 
fluctuated  in  its  outline,  or  presence  it  were  that  for  ever  advanced 
to  the  front  or  for  ever  receded  amongst  shades. 

"  The  eldest  of  the  three  is  named  Mater  Lachrymarum,  Our  Lady 
of  Tears.     She  it  is  that  night  and  day  raves  and  moans,  calling  for 


196  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap. 

vanished  faces.  She  stood  in  Kama,  where  a  voice  was  heard  of  lam- 
entation— Rachel  weeping  for  her  children,  and  refusing  to  be  com- 
forted. She  it  was  that  stood  in  Bethlehem  on  the  night  when  Her- 
od's sword  swept  its  nurseries  of  innocents,  and  the  httle  feet  were 
stiffened  for  ever,  which,  heard  at  times  as  they  tottered  along  floors 
overhead,  woke  pulses  of  love  in  household  hearts  that  were  not  un- 
marked in  heaven.  Her  eyes  are  sweet  and  subtle,  wild  and  sleepy, 
by  turns ;  oftentimes  rising  to  the  clouds,  oftentimes  challenging  the 
heavens.  She  wears  a  diadem  round  her  head.  And  I  knew  by 
childish  memories  that  she  could  go  abroad  upon  the  winds,  when 
she  heard  the  sobbing  of  litanies  or  the  thundering  of  organs,  and 
when  she  beheld  the  mustering  of  summer  clouds.  This  sister,  the 
eldest,  it  is  that  carries  keys  more  than  papal  at  her  girdle,  which 
open  every  cottage  and  every  palace.  She,  to  my  knowledge,  sat  all 
last  summer  by  the  bedside  of  the  blind  beggar,  him  that  so  often 
and  so  gladly  I  talked  with,  whose  pious  daughter,  eight  years  old, 
with  the  sunny  countenance,  resisted  the  temptations  of  play  and 
village  mirth  to  travel  all  day  long  on  dusty  roads  with  her  afflicted 
father.  For  this  did  God  send  her  a  great  reward.  In  the  spring 
time  of  the  year,  and  whilst  her  own  spring  was  budding,  he  recalled 
her  to  himself.  But  her  blind  father  mourns  for  ever  over  her;  still 
he  dreams  at  midnight  that  the  little  guiding  hand  is  locked  within 
his  own ;  and  still  he  awakens  to  a  darkness  that  is  now  within  a 
second  and  a  deeper  darkness.  This  Mater  Lachrymarum  also  has 
been  sitting  all  this  winter  of  1844-5  within  the  bedchamber  of  the 
Czar,  bringing  before  his  eyes  a  daughter,  not  less  pious,  that  vanish- 
ed to  God  not  less  suddenly,  and  left  behind  her  a  darkness  not  less 
profound.  By  the  power  of  the  keys  it  is  that  Our  Lady  of  Tears 
glides,  a  ghostly  intruder,  into  the  chambers  of  sleepless  men,  sleep- 
less women,  sleepless  children,  from  Ganges  to  the  Nile,  from  Nile  to 
Mississippi,  And  her,  because  she  is  the  first-born  of  her  house,  and 
has  the  widest  empire,  let  us  honour  with  the  title  of  Madonna. 

"The  second  sister  is  called  Mater  Suspiriorum,  Our  Lady  of 
Sighs.  She  never  scales  the  clouds,  nor  walks  abroad  upon  the 
winds.  She  wears  no  diadem.  And  her  eyes,  if  they  were  ever 
seen,  would  be  neither  sweet  nor  subtle ;  no  man  could  read  their 
story ;  they  would  be  found  filled  with  perishing  dreams,  and  with 
wrecks  of  forgotten  delirium.  But  she  raises  not  her  eyes;  her 
head,  on  which  sits  a  dilapidated  turban,  droops  for  ever,  for  ever 


xn.]  CLASSIFICATION  AND  REVIEW.  1«7 

fastens  on  the  dust.  She  weeps  not.  She  groans  not.  But  she 
sighs  inaudibly  at  intervals.  Her  sister,  Madonna,  is  oftentimes 
stormy  and  frantic,  raging  in  the  highest  against  heaven,  and  de- 
manding back  her  darlings.  But  Our  Lady  of  Sighs  never  clamours, 
never  defies,  dreams  not  of  rebellious  aspirations.  She  is  humble 
to  abjectness.  Hers  is  the  meekness  that  belongs  to  the  hopeless. 
Murmur  she  may,  but  it  is  in  her  sleep.  Whisper  she  may,  but  it  is 
to  herself  in  the  twilight.  Mutter  she  does  at  times,  but  it  is  in  sol- 
itary places  that  are  desolate  as  she  is  desolate,  in  ruined  cities,  and 
when  the  sun  has  gone  down  to  his  rest.  This  sister  is  the  visitor 
of  the  Pariah,  of  the  Jew,  of  the  bondsman  to  the  oar  in  the  Medi- 
terranean galleys ;  of  the  English  criminal  in  Norfolk  Island,  blotted 
out  from  the  books  of  remembrance  in  sweet  far-off  England ;  of  the 
baffled  penitent  reverting  his  eyes  for  ever  upon  a  solitary  grave, 
which  to  him  seems  the  altar  overthrown  of  some  past  and  bloody 
sacrifice,  on  which  altar  no  oblations  can  now  be  availing,  whether 
towards  pardon  that  he  might  implore,  or  towards  reparation  that  he 
might  attempt.  Every  slave  that  at  noonday  looks  up  to  the  tropi- 
cal sun  with  timid  reproach,  as  he  points  with  one  hand  to  the  earth, 
our  general  mother,  but  for  him  a  step-mother — as  he  points  with  the 
other  hand  to  the  Bible,  our  general  teacher,  but  against  Mm  sealed 
and  sequestered ;  every  woman  sitting  in  darkness,  without  love  to 
shelter  her  head,  or  hope  to  illumine  her  solitude,  because  the  heav- 
en-bom instincts  kindling  in  her  nature  germs  of  holy  affections, 
which  God  implanted  in  her  womanly  bosom,  having  been  stifled  by 
social  necessities,  now  burn  sullenly  to  waste,  like  sepulchral  lamps 
amongst  the  ancients ;  every  nun  defrauded  of  her  unretuming  May- 
time  by  wicked  kinsmen,  whom  God  will  judge ;  all  that  are  betrayed, 
and  all  that  are  rejected ;  outcasts  by  traditionary  law,  and  children 
of  hereditary  disgrace — all  these  walk  with  Our  Lady  of  Sighs.  She 
iilso  carries  a  key,  but  she  needs  it  little.  For  her  kingdom  is  chiefly 
amongst  the  tents  of  Shem,  and  the  houseless  vagrant  of  every  clime. 
Yet  in  the  very  highest  walks  of  man  she  finds  chapels  of  her  own  j 
and  even  in  glorious  England  there  are  some  that,  to  the  world,  car. 
ry  their  heads  as  proudly  as  the  reindeer,  who  yet  secretly  have  re- 
ceived her  mark  upon  their  foreheads. 

"But  the  third  sister,  who  is  also  the  youngest — 1  Hush !  whisper 
whilst  we  talk  of  Aer  /  Her  kingdom  is  not  large,  or  else  no  flesh 
should  live ;  but  within  that  kingdom  all  power  is  hers.     Her  head, 


198  DE  QUINCEY.  [chap.xh, 

turreted  like  that  of  Cybele,  rises  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  sight. 
She  droops  not ;  and  her  eyes,  rising  so  high,  might  be  hidden  by  dis- 
tance. But,  being  what  they  are,  they  cannot  be  hidden ;  through  the 
treble  veil  of  crape  which  she  wears,  the  fierce  light  of  a  blazing  mis- 
ery, that  rests  not  for  matins  or  for  vespers,  for  noon  of  day  or  noon 
of  night,  for  ebbing  or  for  flowing  tide,  may  be  read  from  the  very 
ground.  She  is  the  defier  of  God.  She  is  also  the  mother  of  luna- 
cies and  the  suggestress  of  suicides.  Deep  lie  the  roots  of  her  pow- 
er, but  narrow  is  the  nation  that  she  rules.  For  she  can  approach 
only  those  in  whom  a  profound  nature  has  been  upheaved  by  central 
convulsions,  in  whom  the  heart  trembles  and  the  brain  rocks  under 
conspiracies  of  tempest  from  without  and  tempest  from  within. 
Madonna  moves  with  uncertain  steps,  fast  or  slow,  but  still  with 
tragic  grace.  Our  Lady  of  Sighs  creeps  timidly  and  stealthily.  But 
this  youngest  sister  moves  with  incalculable  motions,  bounding,  and 
with  tiger's  leaps.  She  carries  no  key ;  for,  though  coming  rarely 
amongst  men,  she  storms  all  doors  at  which  she  is  permitted  to  enter 
at  alL    And  her  name  is  Mater  Tenebrarum,  Our  Lady  of  Darkness." 

This  is  prose-poetry ;  but  it  is  more.  It  is  a  permanent 
addition  to  the  mythology  of  the  human  race.  As  the 
Graces  are  three,  as  the  Fates  are  three,  as  the  Furies  are 
three,  as  the  Muses  were  originally  three,  so  may  the  va- 
rieties and  degrees  of  misery  that  there  are  in  the  world, 
and  the  proportions  of  their  distribution  among  mankind, 
be  represented  to  the  human  imagination  for  ever  by  De 
Quincey's  Three  Ladies  of  Sorrow  and  his  sketch  of  their 
figures  and  kingdoms. 


THE   KND. 


By  WILLIAM  BLACK 


Library  Edition. 


A  DAUGHTER  OF  HETH. 

A  PRINCESS  OF  THULE. 

DONALD  ROSS  OF  HEIMRA. 

GREEN  PASTURES  AND 
PICCADILLY. 

IN  FAR  LOCHABER. 

IN  SILK  ATTIRE. 

JUDITH  SHAKESPEARE.  Il- 
lustrated by  Abbey. 

KILMENY. 

MACLEOD  OF  DARE.     Ul'd. 

MADCAP  VIOLET. 

PRINCE  FORTUNATUS.  Il- 
lustrated. 

SABINA  ZEMBRA. 

SHANDON  BELLS.    Ill'd. 


STAND  FAST,  CRAIQ-ROT- 

STON!    Illustrated. 

SUNRISE. 

THAT  BEAUTIFUL 
WRETCH.    Illustrated. 

THE  MAGIC  INK,  AND 
OTHER  STORIES.     Ill'd. 

THE  STRANGE  ADVEN- 
TURES OF  A  HOUSE- 
BOAT.    Illustrated. 

THE  STRANGE  ADVEN- 
TURES OF  A  PHAETON. 

THREE  FEATHERS. 

WHITE  HEATHER. 

WHITE  WINGS.    Illustrated. 

YOLANDE.     Illustrated. 


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Mr.  Black  knows  so  well  just  what  to  describe,  and  to  what  length, 
that  the  scenery  of  his  novels — by  comparison  with  that  of  many  we  are 
obliged  to  read — seems  to  have  been  freshened  by  soft  spring  rains.  His 
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